THE 



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liALllMOIti: 

n(/'/tsJiaf hy /iiM/f/,/ /.mas jr 
yycf. Primer, 



LETTERS 



BRITISH SPY. 

Vs/\ II I a-'*^^ \/44J-J2 



SIXTH EDITION. 

Win the last corrections of the Auilior. 



10altimci:e : 

'UBLISIIED BY FIELDING LUCAS, •TUN', 
J. Kobiiison, Pnntcr, 

1817. 






*v 



m&TRICT OF MARriAND, n. 

Be IT REMEMBERED, That on tliis tWenfy-foUt'tfr 
****««*** day of May, in the thiitj-^fth year of the Inde- 
* SFAl * Pe"dence of the United States of America, 
^ -" "% Fieltling Lucas, .luu. of the said District, hath 
********* deposited in this office, the Title of a Book, the 
riglit whereot he claims as Proprietor, in the words and 
figures following, to wit : 

" The letters of the British Spy. Fourth edition. With 
" the last corrections of the Author." 

In conformity to an Act of the Congress of llie United 
States, entitled, " An Act for the encouragement of Leara- 
ing, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts, and Bc.oks, to 
the authors and proprietors of such copies," diu-hig tlie times 
therein mentioned," and also to the Act, entitled, " An 
Act supplementary to the Act, entitled. An Act for the 
tincouragement of learning, by securing the ci.pies of Maps, 
Cliarts, and Books, to the authox-s and propi'ietors of such 
copit s during the times therein mentioned, and extending 
the be. efits thereof to the arts of Designing, Engraving, 
and Etching historical and other prints." 
PHILIP MOORE, 

eitrk of the District ofMctrylandf 



ADVERTISEMENT 



FOURTH EDITION. 

JL HE publisher having become possessed of a 
copy of " The British Spy," which has passed 
uirough the h. ids of the author, eagerly embiti- 
ees an opportunity of submitting a correct edition 
f that work to the patronage of the publick. 
rhese letters were originally inserted in a daily 
journal ; and they appeared with all the hnperfec- 
tions to which such a mode of publication is una- 
voidably liable. In the present edition, a variety 
of errours have been corrected ; and nothing has 
been spared which it was supposed could add to 
its value 

Of the literary merits of a work which hag 
passed the ordeal of criticism with honour, not 
Only to the author but to liis country, it would 



4 AI!)VBRTISEMENT. 

be impertinent to speak. Common fame has de« 
oifled it to be the fruit of an American pen ; and 
classical taste has pronounced it to be the off- 
spring of genius. To those who would inculcate 
tlie degrading doctrine, that this is the country 

" Where Genius sickens and where Fancy dies,"* 
we could offer the letters of the British Spy as 
an unquestionable evidence that America is enti- 
tled to a high rank in the republick of letters; 
and that the empyreal flame may be respired 

* Cliftou. 



FO IHE EDITOR OF THE VIRGINIA ARGUS. 

Sir, 

X HE manuscript, from which the follo%nng let- 
ters are extracted, was found in the bed chamber 
of a boarding house in a seaport town of Virginia. 
The gentleman, who bad previously occupied that 
chamber, is represented by the misti'ess of the 
house to have been a meek and harmless young 
man, who meddled very little with the afiaii's of 
others, and concerning whom no one appeared 
sufficiently interested to make any inquiry. As it 
seems from the manuscript that the name by 
which he passed was not his real name, and as, 
moreover, she knew nothing of his residence, so 
that she was totally ignorant to Avbom and whi- 
ther to direct it, she considered the manuscript as 
lawful prize and made a present of it to me. It 
seems to be a copy of letters written by a young 
Englishman of rank, during a toar throogh (^Q 



United States, in 1803, to a member of the Bri- 
tish parliaments They are dated from almost 
every part of the United States, containing a great 
deal of geographical desciiption, a delineation of 
every character of note among us, some literary 
disquisitions, with a gjeat mixture of moral and 
political obsei-vation. The lettei-s are prettily 
written. Persons of every description will find in 
them a light and agreeable entertainment ; and 
to the younger part of your readers they may not 
be uninstinictive. For the present I select a few 
which Avere written from this place, and, by way 
of distinction, will give them to yoa imder the 
litle of the British Spy. 



LETTESS. 

LETTER I. 

Richmond, Septembev 1. 

X OU complain, my dear S , that al- 
though I have been resident in Richmond upwards 
of six months, you have heard notliing from me 
since my arrival. The truth is, that I had sus- 
pended writing until a mere intimate acquaintance 
■with the people and their country should furnish 
me with the materials for a correspondence. 
Having now collected those materials, the apolo- 
gy ceases, and the correspondence begins. But 
first, a word of myself. 

I still continue to wear the mask, and most wil- 
lingly exchange the attentions, Avhich would bo 
paid to my rank, for the superiour and exquisite 
pleasure of inspecting this country and this peo- 
ple, without attracting to myself a single eye of 
cariosity, or awakening a shade of susj)icion. Un-- 



8 THE BRITISH SPY. 

tier my assumed name, I gain an admission cl#se 
enough to trace, at leism*e, every line of the 
American character; while the plainness, o: ra- 
ther humility of my appearance, my mannert 
and conversation, pot no one on his guard, but 
enable me to take the portrait of nature, as it 
vere, asleep and naked. Besides there is some- 
thing of innocent roguery in this masquerade, 
wliich 1 am playing, that sorts very vrell with tlip 
sportiveness of my temper. To sit and decoy the 
human heart from behind all its disguises; to 
watch the capricious evolutions of unrestrained 
nature, frisking, curveting and gambolling at hev 
ease, with the curtain of ceremony drawn up to 
the very sky— O ! it is delightful ! 

You are perhaps surprised at my speaking of 
the attentions which would be paid in this coun- 
try to my rank. Yon will suppose that I have for- 
gotten where I am : no such thing. I r&member 
well enough that I am in Virginia, that state, 
which, of all the rest, plumes herself most high- 
ly on the deraocratick spirit of her principles, 
iler political principles are, indeed, democraUcfc 



I'HE BRITISH SPY, 9 

enough in all conscience. Kights and privileges, as 
regulated by the constitution of the state, belong- 
in equal degree to all the citizens; and Peter Pin- 
dar's remark is perfectly true of the people of 
this country, that ** every blackgtiard scoundrel 
is a king."* Nevertheless, there exists in Virgi- 
nia a species of social rank, from Avhich no coun- 
try can, I presume, be intirely ft'ee. I mean thr.t 
kind of rank which arises from the different de- 
grees of wealth and of intellectual refinement. 
These must introduce a style of living and of coii- 
Vei-sation, the former of which a poor man cannot 
attain, while an ignorant one would be incapable 
of enjoying the latter. It seems to me that fi'om 
these causes, wherever they may exist, circles of 
society, strongly discriminated, must inevitably 
result. And one of these causes exists in full 
force in Virginia ; for, hov/ever they may Tain;t 
of " equal liberty in church and state," tliey have 
but little to boast on the subject of equal propev- 



* The reader needs scarcely to be reminded that the 
witcr is aBriton and true to his character, 

1* 



10 THE BRITISH SPY. 

ty. Indeed there is no country, I believe, wlmere 
property is more unequally distributed than ia 
Virginia. This inequality struck me "with peculiar 
Yorce in riding through the lower counties on the 
Fotomak. Here and there a stately aristocratick 
palace, with all its appurtenances, strikes the 
view^ : while all around, for many miles, no other 
buildings are to be seen but the little smoky huts 
and log cabins of pooi', laborious, ignorant tenants. 
And, what is very ridiculous, these tenants, while 
'liey approach the great house, cap in hand, with 
all the fearful trembling submission of the lowest 
feudal vassals, boast in their court-yards, with 
obstreperous exultation, that they live in a land 
of freemen, a land of equal liberty and equal 
rights. Wliether tliis debasing sense of inferiori- 
ty, whi'ih I have mentioned, be a remnant of 
iheir colonial character, or whether it be that it 
J3 natural for poverty and impotence to look up 
with veneration to wealth and power and rank, I 
cannot decide. For my own part, however, I 
have ascribed it to the latter cause ; and I have 
';eea ia a great degree confirmed in the opinion, 



THE BRITISH SPY. li 

by observing the attenticns which m ere paid by 

the most genteel people here to , 

the son of lord 

You know the circumstances in which his lord- 
ship left Virginia : that so far from being popular, 
he can'ied with him the deepest execrations ot" 
these people. Even now, his name is seldom 
mentioned here hut in connexion Avith terms of 
abhorrence or contempt. Aware of this, and be- 
lieving it impossible that 

was indebted to his father, for all the parade of 
respect which was shown to him, 1 sought, in his 
own personal accomplishments, a solution of the 
phenomenon. But I sought in vain. Without one 
solitary ray of native genius, a\ ithout one adveiUi- 
tious beam of science, M^iihout any of those traits 
of soft benevolence which are so universally cap- 
tivating, I found his mind dark and benighted, his 
manners bold, forward and assuming, and hh 
w hole cliaracter evidently inflated Avith the consi- 
deration that he was the son of a lord. His de- 
portment was so evidently dictated by this consi- 
«?erati©n, and he regarded the Virginians, so paU 



12 THE BRITISH SPY. 

pably, in the humiliating light of inferiour plebei- 
ans, that I have often wondered how such a man, 
and the son too of so very unpopular a father, es- 
caped from this country without personal injury, 
or, at least, personal insult. I am now persuaded, 
that this impunity, and the gi'eat I'espect which 
Vvas paid to him, resulted solely from his noble 
descent, and was nothing more than the tribute 
which man pays either to imaginary or real supe- 
i-iority. On this occasion, I stated my surprise to 
a young Virginian, who happened to belong to 
llie democratick party. He, however, did not 
choose to admit the statement ; but asserted, that 

whatever respect had been shown to , 

proceeded solely from the federalists ; and that it 
was an unguarded evolution of their pi'ivate at- 
tachment to monarchy and its appendages. Ithen 
stated the subject to a very sensible gentleman, 
whom I knew to belong to the federal phalanx. 
Kot willing to degrade his party by admitting 
that they would prostrate themselves before the 
empty shadow of nobility, he alleged that no- 
thing had been manifested towards voung 



THE BRITISH SPY, 13 

, , beyond the hospitality which was due 

to a genteel stranger ; and that if there had been 
any thing of parade on his account, it was attin- 
butable only to the ladies, Avho had merely exer- 
cised their wonted privilege of coquetting with 
a fine young fellow. But notwithstanding all 
this, it was easy to discern in the look, tlie voice, 
and whole mannex', with which gentlemen as well 
as ladies of both parties saluted and accosted 
young , a secret spirit of respect- 
ful diffidence, a species of silent, reverential abase- 
ment, which, as it could not have been excited by 
])is personal qualities, must have been homage 
to his rank. Judge, then, whether I have not 
just reason to apprehend, that on the annunciation 
of my real name, the curtain of ceremony would 
fall, and nature would cease to play her pranks 
before me. 

Richmond is built, as you will remember, on 
the north side of James river, an;! at the head of 
tide water. There is a raanusciipt in this state 
which relates a curious anecdote concerning the 
origin of tliis town. The lan<] hereabout was 



14 THE BllITISH SPY. 

owned by Col. William Byrd. This gentleman, 
with the former proprietor of the land at the head 
of tide water on Appomatox i-iver, was appointed, 
it seems, to run the line between Virginia and 
North Carolina. The operation was a most tre- 
mendous one ; for, in the execution of it, they had 
to penetrate and pass quite tfirough the greafc 
Dismal Swamp. It would be almost impossible to 
give you a just conception of the horrours of this 
enterprise. Imagine to yourself an immense mo- 
rass, more than forty miles in length and twenty 
iu breadth, its soil a black, deep mire, covered, 
with a stupendous forest of juniper and cypress 
ftrees, whose luxuriant branches, interwoA^en 
throughout, intercept the beams of the sun and 
teach day to counterfeit the night. This forest^ 
which until that time, perhaps, the human foot 
had never violated, had become the secui*e re- 
ti'eat often thousand beasts of prey. The adven- 
turers, therefore, beside the almost endless labour 
of felling trees in a proper direction to form a 
footway throughout, moved amid perpetual tcr- 
voUrs, and each night had to sleep en mliudre, 



THE BRITISH SPY. 15 

upon their arms, surrounded with the deafening, 
soul-chilling yell of those hunger-smitten lords of 
the desert. It was, one night, as they lay in the 
midst of scenes like these, that Hope, that never- 
failing friend of man, paid them a consoling visit, 
and sketched in brilliant prospect, the plans of 
Richmond and Petersburg.* 

Richmond occupies a very picturesque and 
most beautiful situation. I have never met with 
such an assemblage of striking and interesting 
objects. The town, dispersed over hills of vari- 
ous shapes ; the river descending from west to 
east and obstructed by a multitude of small is- 
lands, clumps of trees, and myriads of rocks; 
among which it tumbles, foams and roars; consti- 
tuting what are called the falls ; the same river, 
at the lower end of the town, bending at right an- 
gles to the south and winding reluctantly off for 
many miles in that direction ; its polished surface 
caught here and there by tlie eye, but more ge- 
nerally covered from the view by trees ; among 

* So, at least, spi^aks the manuscript account which Col. 
Byid has left of tliis expedition, and which is now in the 
hands of some of his dcscendeuts ; perhaps of the family at 
Westover. 



16 THE BRITISH SPY. 

■which the white sails of approaching and depart* 
ing vessels exhibit a curious and interesting ap- 
pearance : then again, on the opposite side, the 
little town of Manchester, built on a hill, which, 
sloping gently to the river, opens the whole town 
to the view, interspersed, as it is, with vigorous 
and flourishing poplars, and surrounded to a great 
distance by green plains and stately wootls — all 
tliese objects, falling at once under the eye, con- 
stitute, by far, the most finely varied and most 
animated landscape that I have ever seen. A 
mountain, like the Blue Ridge, in the western 
horizon, and the rich tint with which the hand of 
a Pennsylvanian farmer would paint the adjacent 
fields, would make this a more enchanting spot 
than even Damascus is described to be. 

I will endeavour to procure for you a perspcQ- ' 
live view of Richmond, with the embellishments 
of fancy which I have just mentioned ; and you 
will do me the honour to give it a place in youF 
pavilion. 

Adieu, for the present, my dear S 

May the perpetual smiles of heaven be yours. 



LETTER n. 

Ilichmond, September 'i, 

-A.LMOST every day, my dear S - , some 

new evidence presents itself in support of the 
Abbe llaynal's opinion, that this continent was 
once covered by the ocean, from which it has 
gradually emerged. But that this emersion is, 
even comparatively speaking, of recent date, can- 
not be admitted; unless the comparison be made 
with the creation of the earth ; and even then, in 
order to justify the remark, the era of the crea- 
tion must, I fear, be fixed much farther back, than 
the period which has been inferred from the Mo- 
«aic account.* 

* Some errour has certainly happened in computing ths 
<na of the eai-th's creation from tlie five books of Moses. 
Voltaire informs us, that certain French philosophers, mIio 
visited China, inspected the official register or history of the 
eclipses of the sun and moon, which, it seems, has been 
continually kept in that country ; that on calculating tbetn 
back, they were all found correct, and conducted those 
l»Lilosophers to a period (I will not undertake to speak 



18 THE BRITISH SPY. 

The following facts are authenticated bej'ond 
any kind of doubt. During the last spring, a gen- 
tleman in the neighbourhood of Williamsburg, 
about sixty miles below this place, in digging a 

with certainty of the time, but I think) twenty-three centu- 
ries before the Mosaic era. It is notorious, however, that 
the Chinese plume themselves on the antiquity of their 
country ; and in order to prop this, it would have been just 
as easy for the Chinese astronomers to have fabricated and 
dressed up the register in question, by posterior calcula- 
tions, as for the French astronomers to have made their 
retrospective examination of the accuracy of those eclipses. 
The same science precisely was requisite for both purposes ; 
and although the improvement of the arts and sciences in 
China, was found, by the first Europeans who went 
amongst them, to bear no proportion to the antiquity of 
the counti-y, yet there is no reason to doubt that the Clri- 
nese mandarins were at least as competent to the calcula* 
tion of an eclipse as the shepherds of E^rypt. Indeed we 
are, I believe, expressly told, that the Chinese, long before 
they were \'isited by the people of Europe, had been in the, 
habit of using a species of astronomical appara'.us ; and of 
stamping almanacks from plates or blocks, many hundred 
years, even before printing was discovered in Europe. I 
see no gi-eat reason, therefore, to rely with veiy implicio 
confidence on the register of China. Indeed I am very lit- 
tle disjMsed to build my faith, as to any histoincal fact, on 
evidence perfectly within the reach of human art and im- 
posture ; comprehending all writings, ins«riptions, litera»y 



THE BRITISH SPY. 19 

dJtch on his farm, discovered, about fcur or five 
feet below the surface of the earth, a considera- 
ble portion of the skeleton of a whale. Several 
fragments of the ribs and other parts of the sys- 

or hieroglyphick, medals, &c. which tend, either to flatter our 
passion for the marvellous, or to aggrandize the particular 
nation in whose bosom they are found. And, therefore, to- 
gether with the Chinese register, I throw out of the consi- 
deration of this question another recoi"d, which goes to the 
same purpose: I mean the Chaldaic manuscript found by 
Alexander in the city of Babylon. 

Tlie inferences reported by Mr. Brydone, as having been 
drawn, by Recupero, from the lavas of Mount Etna (those 
stupendous records which no human ait or imposture could 
possibly have fabricated) deserve. I think, much more se- 
rious attention. They are subject, indeed, to one of the 
preceding objections : to wit, that the data, from which all 
«he subsequent calculations are dra\™, are inscriptions ; ap- 
pealing not only to our passion for the mai-vellous, but 
flattering the vanity of the Sicilians, by establishing the 
great ag* of their mountain, at once their curse and their 
blessing. These inscriptions, however, do not rest merely 
on their own authority : they allege a fact which is vei-y 
strongly countenanced by recent and unerring observation. 
As Brydone may not be in the hands of ever)' person who 
may chance to possess and read this bagatelle, and as this 
subject is really curious and interesting I beg leave to sub- 
join those parts of that traveller's Jrighly entertaining letters, 
vihich relate tojt. 



'^0 THE BRITISH SPY. 

lem were found ; and all the vertebrce regularly 
arranged and very little impaired as to their figure. 
The spot, on which this skeleton was found, lies 
about two miles from the nearest shore of James 

" The last lava we crossed, before our arrival there iJacl 
Reale] is of vast extent. I thought we never should have 
had done with it : it certainly is not less than six or seven 
miles broad , and appears in many places to be of an enor- 
mous depth. 

*' AVhen we came near the sea, I was desirous to see what 
form it had assumed in meeting with the water. I went to 
examine it, and found it had driven back the waves for up- 
wards of a mile, and had formed a large, black, high pro- 
montory, where, before, it was deep water. This lava, I 
imagined, from its barrenness, for it is, as yet, covered with 
a very scanty soil, had run from the mountain only a few 
ages ago; but was surprised to be informed by Signior 
Recupero, the historiographer of Etna, that this very lava is 
mentioned by Diodorus Siculus to have burst from Etna, in 
the time of the second Pnnic war, when Syracuse was be- 
sieged by tlie Romans. A detachment was sent fi'om Tau- 
vominum to the relief of the besieged. They were stopped 
ou their march by this stream of lava, which having reach- 
ed the sea before their aiTival at the foot of the mountain, 
had cut oft' their passage, and obliged them to return by the 
back of Etna, upwards of a hundred miles about. His au- 
thority for this, he tells me, was taken from inscripiions on 
Roman monuments found on this lava, and that it was like- 
wise \vell ascertained by many of tlie old Sicilian aplhors. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 21 

^veV, and fifty or sixty from the Atlaiitlc ocean. 
The whole phenomenon bore the cleai-est evi- 
dence that the animal had perished in its native 
element ; and as the ocean is the nearest resort of 

New as this is about two thousand years ago, one would ima- 
gine, if lavas have a regular progress in beconiiug fertile 
fields, that this must long ago have become at least arable : 
this, however, is not the case ; and it is, as yet, only covered 
with a very scanty vegetation and incapable of producing* 
either corn or vines. There are indeed pretty large trees 
growing in the crevices which are full of a rich earth ; but 
in all probability, it will be some hundred yeai-s yet, before 
there is enough of it to render this land of any use to the 
proprietors,, 

" It is curious to consider, that the surface of this black 
and ban-en matter, in process of time, becomes one of the 
most fertile soils upon earth : But what must be the time to 
bring it to its utmost perfection, when after two thousand 
years, it is still, in most places, but a barren rock .'" Vol. I. 
Letter 6. 

« Signior Recupero, who obligingly engages to be our 
cicerone, has shown us some curious remains of antiquity ; 
bat they have been all so shaken and shattered by the 
mountain, that hai-dly any thing is to be found intire. 

" Near to a vault, which is now thirty feet below ground, 
and has, probably, lieen a burial place, there is a draw-well, 
where there are sevei-al strata of lavas, with eaiih to a consi- 
■Jerable thickness over the surface of each stratum. Recupero 
has made use of this as an argument to }>rove t!ie great an- 



22 THE BRITISH SPY. 

the whale, it follows that the ocean must once 
have covered the country, at least as high up as 
Williamsburg. 

Again, in digging several wells lately in this 
town, the teeth of sharks were found from sixty 
to ninety or an hundred feet below the surface of 
the earth. The probability is that these teeth 
were deposited by the shark itself; and as this 
fish is never knov/n to infest very shallow streams, 
the conclusion is clear that this whole country 
has once been buried under several fathoms of 
water. At all events, these teeth must be consi- 

tiquity of the raouutain. For if it require two thousand 
years or upwards, to form but a scanty soil on the surface of 
a lava, there must have been more than that space of time 
betwixt each of the eruptions which have formed these 
sti'ata. But what shall we say of a pit they sunk near to Jam 
of a great depth. They pierced through seven distinct lavas^ 
one under the other, the surfaces of which were parallel, 
and most of them covered wit/i a thick bed of rich eaHh. Now, 
says he, the eniption which formed the lowest of these h^vas^ 
if we may be allowed to reason from analogy, must have 
flowed from the mountain at least fourtev^n thousand years 
ago." Vol. I. I^etter 7. Whereas the computation inferred, 
but without doubt inaccurately, from the Pentateuch, makes 
the earth itself only between five and six thousand years oM. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 23 

dered as ascertaining what was once the surface 
of the earth here ; which surface is ven- little 
higher than that of James river. Now if it be 
considered that there has been no perceptible 
difference wrought in the figure or elevation of 
the coast, nor, consequently, in the precipitation 
of theinteriour streams since the earliest recorded 
discovery of Virginia, which was two hundred 
years ago, it will follow, that James river must, 
for many hundreds perhaps thousands of years, 
Iiave been running, at least here, with a verj' ra- 
pid, headlong curi'ent ; the friction whereof must 
certainly have rendered the channel much deep- 
er than it was at the time of the deposition of 
these teeth. The result is clear, that the surface 
of the stream, which even now, after all this fric- 
tion and consequent depression, is so nearly on a 
level with the site of the shark's teeth, must, ori- 
ginally, have been much higher. I take this to 
be an irrefragable proof, that the land here was 
then inundated ; and as there is no ground be- 
tween this and the Atlantic, higher than that on 
which Richmcmd is built, it seems to me indispiT- 



24 THE BRITISH SPY. 

tably certain, that the whole of this beautifitl 
country was once covered with a dreary waste of 
water.* 

To 'Ahat curious and interesting reflections 
docs this subject lead us ! Over this hill en which 

* An elegant nnd well informed writer on the theory of 
the earth, under the signature of " An Inquirer," whose 
remarks were suggested by the perusal of this letter of tlie 
British Spy, observes that sea shells and other marine sub- 
stances are found in every explored part of the world, " on 
the loftiest mountains of Europe and the still loftier Andes 
of South America^" As the British Spy was not writing a 
regular and elaborate ti-eatise on the origin of the earth, he 
did not deem it material to congregate all the facts which 
have been seen, and supposed, in relation to this subject. 

Whether the British Spy is to be considered as an Eng- 
lishman of rank on a tour through America, and writing 
the alxne lettei* io Richmond to his friend in Loudon ; or 
whether be is to be considered as one of our own citizens, 
disposed to entertain the people of Richmond and its vici- 
•nity with a light and amusing speculation on the origin of 
their country, in either instance it was both more natural 
and more interesting that the speculation should apj>ear to 
have grown out of recent facts discovered in their o\va 
town or neighbourhood, and with which they are all suji- 
posed to be conversant, than on distant and controvertible 
facts, which it was not important to the inquiry, whetlieV' 
flicy knew or believetl, or not. 



THE BRITISH SPY. ^3 

I am now sitting and writing at my ease, and 
from which I look with deliglit on the landscape 
that smiles around me — over this hill and over 
this landscape, the billows of the ocean have roll- 
ed in wild and dreadful fury, while the leviathan, 
the whale and all the monsters of the deep, luive 
disported themselves amid the fearful tempest. 

Where was then the sliore of the ocean ? From 
this place, for eighty miles to the westward, the 
ascent of tlie country is very gradual ; and even 
up to the Blue Ridge, marine shells and other 
phenomena are found, which demonstrate that 
that country too, has been visited by the ocean. 
How then has it emerged ? Has it been by a sud- 
den couvulsiou? Certainly not. No observing man, 
who has ever travelled from the Blue Ridge to 
the Atlantic, can doubt that this emersion has 
been effected by very slow gradations. For as you 
advance to the east, the pi^oofs of the former sub- 
mersion of the country thicken upon you. On the 
shores of York river, the bones of whales abound ; 
and I have been not a little amused in walking 

on the sand beach of tliat river during the recess 
2 



26 THE BRITISH SPY. 

of the tide, and looking up at the high cliff or 
bank above nie, to observe strata of sea shell* 
not yet calcined, like those v/hich lay on the 
beach under my feet, interspersed -with sti-ata of 
earth (the joint result no doubt of sand and pu- 
trid vegetables) exhibiting at once a samf.le of 
the manner in whicli tlie adjacent soil had been 
formed, and proof of the comparatively recent 
desertion of t'iie waters. 

Upon the "nhole, every tiling li.ere tends to con»^ 
firm the ingenious theoiy of Mr. Buffon: that the 
eastern coasts of continents are enVarged by the 
perpetual revolution of the earth from west to sast, 
which has the obvious tendency to congiomorate 
the loose sands of the sea on the eastern coast; 
while the tides of the ocean, drawn from east to 
west, against the revolving earth, contribute to 
aid the process, and hasten the alluvion. But ad- 
mitting the x\bbe Raynal's idea, that America is 
a far you:iger country than either of the other 
continents, or in other words, that America ha» 
emerged long since their formstlon, how did it 
happen tiiat the materials, which compose this 



THE BRITISH SPY. Sr 

continent, were not accumulated on the eastern 
coast of Asia ? Was it, tliat tiie present mountains 
of America, then protuberances on the bed of 
the ocean, intercepted a part of the passing sands 
which would otherwise have been washed on the 
Asiatic shore, and thus became the rudiments of 
this vast continent ? If so, America is under much 
greater obligations to her barren mountains, than 
she has hitherto supposed. 

But while Mr. Buffon's theory accounts very 
handsomely for the enlargement of the eastern 
coast, it offers no kind of reason for any extension 
©f the western ; on the contrary, the very causes 
assigned, to supply the addition to the eastern, 
seem at first view to threaten a diminution of the 
western coast. Accordingly, Mr. Buffon, we see, 
has adopted also the latter idea ; and, in the con- 
stant abluvion from the western coast of one con- 
tinent, has found a perennial source of materials 
for ihe eastern coast of that whicli lies behind it. 
This last idea, liowever, by r.o means quadrates 
with the hypothesis, that the mountains of Ame- 
rica formed the oritrinai stamhia of the eonti- 



28 THE BRITISH SPY. 

nent ; for, on the latter supposition, the mountains 
themselves would constitute the western coast ; 
since Mr. Buffon's tlieory precludes the idea of 
any accession in that quarter. But the mountains 
do not constitute the Avestern coast. On the con- 
trary, there is a wider extent of country between 
tlie great mountains in North America, and the 
Pacific or the northern oceans, than tliere is be- 
tween tJie same mountsdns and the Atlantic ocean. 
Mv. Buft'on's theory, therefore, however rational 
as to the eastern, becomes defective, as he presses 
it, in relation to the western, coast; unless, to 
accommodate the theory, we suppose the total 
abrasion of some great mountain which originally 
constituted the western limit, and which was, it- 
self, the embryon of this continent. But for many 
I'easons, and particularly the present contiguity 
to Asia, at one part, where sucli a mountain, ac- 
cording to the hypothesis, must have run, the 
idea of any sucli limit will be thought rather too 
extravagant for adoption. The fact is, that JVlr. 
Buflfon has considered his theory rather in its 
operation on a continent already establisiicd, than 



THE BRITISH SPY. 29 

OH the biith or primitive emersion of a continent 
from the ocean. 

As to the western part of this continent, I mean 
that which lies heyond the Allegany mountains, 
if it were not originally gained from the ocean, it 
has received an accumulation of earth by no 
means less wonderful. Far beyond the Ohio, in 
piercing the earth for water, the stumps of trees, 
beai'ing the most evident impressions of the ax, 
and on one of them the rust of consumed iron, 
have hcen discovered between ninety and a hun- 
dred feet below the present surface of the earth. 
This is a proof, by the by, not only that this im- 
mense depth of soil has been accumulated in that 
quarter ; but that that new country^ as the inha- 
bitants of the Atlantic states call it, is, indeed, a 
very ancient one ; and that North America has un- 
dergone more revolutions in point of civilization, 
than have heretofore been thought of, either by 
the Eui'opean or American philosophers. That 
part of this continent, which borders on the wes- 
tern ocean, being almost entirely unknown, it is im- 
possible to say whether it exhibit the same e^^'• 



50 TRE BRITISH SPY. 

dence of emersion which is found here. M'Kenzie, 
however, the only traveller who has ever pene- 
trated through this vast forest, records a curious 
tradition among some of the western trihes of In- 
dians : to wit, that the world was once covered with 
water. The tradition is embellished, as usual, with 
a number of very highly poetical fictions. The 
fact, V hich I suppose to he couched under it, is 
the ancient submersion of that part of the con- 
tinent; which, certainly looks much more like 
a ■world, than the petty temtory that was inunda- 
ted by Deucalion's flood. If I remember aright, 
for I cannot immediately refer to the book, Stith, 
in his history of Virginia, has recorded a similar 
tradition among the Atlantic tribes of Indians. 
I have no doubt that if M'Kenzie had been as 
well qualified for scientifick research, as he was 
undoubtedly honest, firm And persevering, it 
would have been in his power to have thrown 
great lights on this subject as it relates to the 
western country. 

For my own part, while I believe the present 
mountains of America to have constituted the 



THE BRITISH SPY. 31 

original stamina of the continent, I believe, at the 
same time, the v/estern as well as tlie eastern 
countiy to be the effect of alluvion ; produced too 
by the same causes : the rotation of the earth, and 
the planetary attraction of the ocean. 

The perception of this v/lll be easy and simple, 
if, instead of confounding- the mind, by a wide 
view of the whole continent as it now stands, we 
carry back our imaginations to the time of its 
birth, and suppose some one of the highest pinna- 
cles of the Blue Ridge to have just emerged above 
the surface of the sea. Now whetlier the rolling 
of the earth to the east give to the ocean, which 
floats loosely upon its bosom, an actual counter- 
current, to the west,* which is occasionally, fui-- 

* This idea, which is merely stated hypothetknlbj, is con- 
sidei-ed, by the Inquirer, as having been a position absolute' 
ly taken by the British Spy ; and as the reverse principle, 
<to wit, tliat the motion of the waters is taken from and 
coiTesponds with that of the solid earth,) is so rvell establish- 
«/, he concludes that it must have been contested by the 
British Spy through mere inadvertence. But, for my part, 
I do not perceive how this hypothetical idea of the British 
Spy is, at all, in collision with the doctrine of the diurnal 
or annua! revolution of the terraqueous gloiie. 



32 THE BRITISH SPY. 

ther accelerated by the jr.otion of the tides in that 
direction, or whether this be not the case ; still to 
our newly emerged pinnacle, which is whirled, 
by the eartli's motion, through the waters of tlie 

The British Spy could sot have been guilty of so great 
an absurdity as to intend that the waters of the ocean de- 
seited their bed and broke over the eastern coasts and lof- 
ty mountains of opposing continents, in order to rcajntain 
their actual counter-cuiTent to the west. It must have 
been clear to him, that the ocean, keeping its bed, must at. 
lend the motion of the earth, " not only on its axis, bat in 
its orbit." But the question here is not as to the position 
of the whole ocean as it relates to the whole earth : the 
question is merely as to the locomotion of the particles of 
the ocean, among themselves. For although the ocean, as 
well as the solid eaith, must perform a complete revolu- 
Vjon around their common axis once in twenty-four hours, 
it does not follow, as I take it, that the globules of the fluid 
ocean must, all this time, remain as fixed as the atoms of 
the solid earth : they certainly may and certainly have, from 
some cause or other, a subordinate motion among tliem- 
selves, frequently adverse to the general motion of the 
globe : to wit, a current to the west. The atmosphere be- 
longs as much to this globe as the waters of the ocean do: 
that is to say, it cannot any more than the ocean fly off 
and attach itself to any other planet. It feels, like the ocean, 
the gravitating power of the earth and the attraction of 
the neighboui-ing planets. It is affeeted, no doubt, vei-y 
sensibly (at least the lower region of it) by the earth's diuf- 
nal rotation, antl like the ocean, is «ompell^ to attend het 



THE BRITISH SPY. 33 

decw the consequences ^vill be the same as it" 
tliere A\crc tliis actual and strong current. For 
while the waters will be coatinually accumulated 
ou the eastern coast of this pinnacle, it is obvious 

in her airaual journey around the sun. But what of this ? 
Docs the annospheve remain fixed in such a manner, as 
t)jat the part of it, v.hieli our ai»ipo<les are respiring at 
this moment, is to furnisli our diet, awr pcJmlum tvYa' twelve 
boui's hence ? Certainly not : the atoms which compose the 
atmosphere are, we laiow, in spite of the eartli's diurnal 
and annual motion, agiiated and imiielkd in every direc- 
tion ; and so also, we equally well know, are the waters of 
the ocean. 

If the Inquirer, when he says that " the motion of the 
earth is commmilcated to every part of it, whether solid or 
fluid," intend thav the motion of the loose and fluid parti- 
cles of the ocean take, from tlie earth, a flux among them- 
selves to the east, tJie result would be an actual current to 
the east ; which is not pretended. If he mean, that the glo- 
bules of the ocean, uuafTected by any other cause than the 
motion of the earth, would always maintain the same posi- 
tion in relation to each otlier, he may, indeed, allege a prin- 
ciple which is well established; but as it does not meet the 
approbation of my reason, and as I am not in the habit of 
reading merely that I may understand and believe, I must 
beg permission to enter my dissent to the principle. It 
would be difficult, if not impossible, so close as we are in 
the neighbourhood of the earth's attraction, to invent any 
apparatus by which a decisive expeniment could be made 
vn this subject. But, by the way of illustration, let us sup- 



34. THE BRITISH SPV. 

that on the western coast, (protected, as it "vvouirt 
be, fi-om the current, by the newly risen earth,) 
the waters >\ ill always be comparatively low and 
calm. The result is clear. The sands, borne along 

pose the eardi at rest ; let us supixise the atmosphere, by 
the liand of the great chemist \sho raised it into its present 
aeriform state, once moi-e reduced to a fluid ; let us suppose 
it, like a great ocean, to surround the earth within the tor- 
rid zone, (partitioned at right angles, hy two or three moun- 
tains running from north to soutlO and all its parts reposing 
in a halcyon cahn ; let us then suppose the earth wliirled on 
its axis to the east ; what would be tlie probable effect ? It is 
clear that the lower region of this superincumbent ocean 
would be most strongly bouiid by the earth's attraction ; it 
is equally clear that the stratum of globules, immediately 
in contact with the earth, would adhere nwre strongly 
thereto, than to the fluid stratum which rested upon it; 
ivhile this adhesion to the sui-face of tlie earth would be 
assisted by the many rugged protuberances on that surface. 
Hence, at the first motion of the earth, the lowest part of 
this circumambient ocean, being most powerfully attracted 
and attached to the earth, would slide under the fluid mass 
above it, and thereby produce an inequality in the upper 
surface of the water itself; an elevation in the eastern, a 
eoneavity in tlie western side of each partition ; wliile the 
waters, from their tendency to seek their level, would 
strive to restore the balance, by falling constantly from 
east to west. 

WheUier this effect would continue for ever, or how 
.*0D£ it would continue iu our oceans as they are at present 



THE BRITISH SPY. 35 

by the ocean's current over the northern and 
southern extremities of this pinnacle, -will always 
have a tendency to settle in the calm behind it ; 
and thus, by pei'petual accumulations, form a 

arrang' d, it is not easy to solve. Btit that a current from the 
east to the west would be at first produced is as evident 
as the light of heaven : if it be denied, I demand ihe solu- 
tion of the following phenomenon: if a plate be filled with 
oil or other fluid, and the plate be then drawn in any di- 
rection, how does it happen that the fluid w ill manifest a 
tendency to flow in the opposite direction ; insomuch, that 
if the draught of the plate be sudden, tlie fluid, runniiijj 
rapidly over the adverse edge of the plate, shall discharge 
itself completely; leaving little behind but the inferiour stra- 
tum ? I take it, that the man who solves this phenomenon, 
satisfactorily, will be compelled to resort to principles, 
which, when applied to our oceans resting loosely as they 
do on the earth which rolls under them, would inevitably 
produce a western current ; and this current once produced 
it will be diflicidt to say why and when it should cease. A 
current thus produced would be unequal, from the nature 
of its cause, at various dep lis : it would be subject to tem- 
porary affections and alterations near its surface, by the 
winds, the tides and the diversified shapes of the coasts on 
which t!ie ocean rolls. The general tendency, however, of 
the great mass of the waters would be to the west. 

I see no sound reason in renouncing Mr. BnfFon's the- 
ory, either un account of the eloquent and beautiful man- 
ner in which it is explained ; nor because it has long had 



36 THE BlIlTiSH SFV. 

v/estern coast, more rapidly perhaps that) an caa- 
<^ern oue ; as we may see in miniature, by the capes 
and shallows collected by the still water, on each 
side, at tlie mouths of creeks, or below rocks, in 
the rapids of a river. 

its just pertion of admirers; nor Ijec an se there are other 
more modern theories. "While we are children, it may be 
well enough to lie passively on our backs and jjermit others 
to prepare and feed us \sith the pap of science ; bi . when 
our own judgments and understandings have gained their 
maturity, it beJjoves us, instead of being "a feather for 
evfci-y wind that blows." instead of floating impotcntly be- 
fore the vaprkioas current of fasl)ion and opinion, to lieave 
out all om- anchors ; to take a position from whicli nothing 
shall move us but reason and truth, not novelty and fash- 
ion. In the progress of science, many principles, in my 
opinion, liave been dropped to make way for others, which 
are newer but less true. And among them Mr. BufTon's 
tiieory of tlie earth. The effect of alluvion is so slow, that 
any one generation is almost iniable to perceiv e the change 
wrought by it ; hence, many jKopIe, tmable to sit down 
and reflect on the wojiders wliich time can do, fly off with 
a liind of puerile iwipatience, and resort to any thing. evcH 
a boulsvcrstinimtc of a whole continent, rather than to de- 
pend on so slow and imperceptible an operation as that of 
alluvion. This is not philosophical. Neither on the other 
hand woukl it be philosopliieal to reject a theory because it 
might be nev\' and unsupported by a name. On the contra- 
ry, tlie man who on any branch of philosophy starts a new 
hypothesis, which h.ns even the guise of reason, cnnffrs a 



THK BRITISH SPY. 37 

After this newborn point of earth had gained 
some degree of elevation, it is probable that suc- 
cessive coats of vegetation, according to Dr. Dar- 
\\ in's idea, springing up, then falling and dying 
on the earth, paid an annual tribute to the infant 
continent, while each rain, which fell upon it, 
bore down a part of its substance and assisted 
perpetually in the enlargement of its area. 

It is curious that the ai'rangcment of the moun- 
tains both in North and South Amei'ica, as well as 
the shape of the two coiitinents, combine to 
strengthen the preceding theory. For the moun- 
ttiins, as you will perceive on inspecting your 
Viiaps, run in chains from north to south ; thus 
opposing the widest possible barrier to the sands, 
as they roll from east to west. The shape of the 

benefit on the world ; for he enlarges the ground of thought, 
and although not immediately in the temple of truth him- 
self, may have drojjped a liint, an accidental clew, which 
inay serve to lead others to the door of the temple. In tliis 
spirit, I not only excuse, but am grateful even for, the 
wildest of Dr. Darwin's philosophical chimeras. In the 
same spirit, I offer, without the expectation of its final 
adoption, tlie idea suggested by this note as to the cause 
of a w cstem current. 



38 THE BRITISH SPY. 

continent is just that which would naturally be 
expected from such an origin : that is, they lie 
along, collaterally, with the mountains. As far 
north as the country is Avell known, these ranges 
of mountains are observed ; and it is remarkable, 
that as soon as the Cordilleras terminate in the 
south, the continent of South America ends: 
where they terminate in the north, the continent 
dwindles to a narrow Isthmus. 
- Assuming this theory as correct, it is amusing 
to observe the conclusions to whicli it will lead us. 

As the country is supposed to have been form- 
ed by gradual accumulations, and as these accu- 
mulations were most probably equal or nearly so 
in every part, it follows that, broken as this coun- 
try is in hills and dales, it has assumed no new ap- 
pearance by its emersion ; but that the figure of 
the earth's surface is the same throughout, as 
well where it is now covered by the waters of the 
ocean, as where it has been already denudated. 
So that Mr. Boyle's mountains in the sea cease to 
have any tiling wonderful in them. 

Connected with this, it is not an improbable 



THE BRITISH SPY. SO 

conclusion, that new continents and islands are 
now forming on the bed of the ocean. Perhaps, 
at some future day, lands may emerge in the 
neighbourhood of the Antarctic circle, which, by 
progressive accumulations and a consequent in- 
crease of weight, may keep a juster balance be- 
tween the poles, and produce a material difference 
in our astronomical relations. The navigators of 
that day will be as successful in their discoveries 
in the southern seas, as Columbus was heretofore 
in the northern. For there can be little doubt 
that there has been a time when Columbus, if he 
had lived, would have found his reasonings, on 
the balance of the earth, fallacious ; and would 
have sought these seas for a continent, as much 
in vain, as Drake, Anson, Cook and otheis, en- 
couraged perhaps by similar reasoning, have since 
sought the ocean of the south. 

If Mr. Buffon's notion be correct, tliat the eas- 
tern coast of one continent is perpetually feeding 
on the western coast of that which lies before it, 
the conclusion is inevitable, that the present ma- 
terials of Europe and Africa, and Asia in succes- 



40 THE BRITISH SPY. 

sion, will at some future day, compose the cofiti- 
iients of North and South America ; v.hile the 
latter, thrown on the Asiatic shore, will agaia 
make apai-t, and, in time, the -vvliole of that con- 
rinent, to Avh.ich, by some philosophers, tliey are 
supposed to have been originally attaclied. It is 
equally clear that, by tliis means, the continents 
->vill not only exchange their materials, but their 
position ; so that, in process of time, they must 
respectively make a tour aix)und the globe, main- 
taining, still, the same ceremonious distance from 
each other, which they now hold. 

According to my theory, which supposes an 
alluvion on the western as well as the eastern 
coasts, the continents and islands of the earth, 
will be caused, reciprocally, to approximate, and 
(if materials enough can be found in the bed of 
the ocean, or generated by any process of natifl-e) 
ultimately to unite. Our island of Great Britain, 
therefore, at some future day, and in proper per- 
son, Avill probably invade the territory of France. 
In the course of this work of alluvion, as it relates 
to this country, the refluent waters of the At- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 41 

Ian tic will be forced to I'ecede from Hamptort 
Roads and the Chesapeak; the beds whereof 
will become fertile valleys, or, as they are called 
here, river bottoms ; while the lands in the lower 
district of the state, which are now only a very- 
few feet above the surface of the sea, will rise into 
majestic eminences, and the present sickly site of 
Norfolk be conveited into a high and salubrious 
mountain. I apprehend, however, that the pre- 
sent inhabitants of Norfolk would be extremely 
un%v illing- to have such an effect wrought in theii- 
day ; since there can be little doubt that they pre- 
fer their present commercial situation, mcumber- 
cd as it is by the annual visits of the yellow fever, 
to the elevation and health of the Blue Ridge. 

In the course of this process, too, of which I 
kave been speaking, if the theory be correct, 
the gulf of Mexico will be eventually filled up, 
and the West Indian Islands consolidated with the 
American continent. 

These consequences, visionary as they may 
now appear, are not only probable; but, if the al- 
luvion which is denioasti-ftted- to have taken place 



42 THE BRITISH SPY. 

already, should continue, they are inevitable. 
There is very little probability that the vsthmus 
of Darien, which connects the two continents, is 
coeval with the Blue liidge or the Cordilleras ; 
and it requires only a continuation of the cause, 
Avhich produced the isthmus, to effect the re- 
pletion of the gulf and the consolidation of the 
islands with the continent. 

But when ? I am possessed of no data whereby 
the calculations can be made. The depth at 
■which Herculaneiim and Pompeia were found to 
be buried in the course of sixteen hundred yeai's, 
affords us no light on this inquiry ; because their 
burial was effected not by the slow alluvion and 
accumulation of time, but by the sudden and re- 
peated eruptions of Vesuvius. As little are we 
aided by the repletion of the earth around the 
Tarpeian rock in Rome ; since that repletion was 
most probably effected in a very great degree, by 
the materials of fallen buildings. And besides, 
the original height of the rock is not ascertained 
with any kind of precision : historians having, I 
l)eUeve, merely informed us, that it was suffici- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 43 

ently elevated to kill the criminals who were 
thrown from its sumnnit. 

But a truce with philosopliy. Who 6ould have 
believed that the skeleton of an unwieldy whale, 
and a few mouldering teeth of a shark, w^ould 
Iiave led me such a dance ! 

Adieu, my dear S , for the present : 

May the light of Heaven continue to shine around 
vo\il 



^ LETTER nr. 

rachmond, September IS, 

JL OU inquire into the state of ycur favourite art 

ill Virginia. Eloquence my dear S , has few 

successful votaries here : I mean eloquence of the 
highest order ; such as that to which, not only 
the bosom of your friend, but the feelings of tlie 
whole British nation bore evidence, in listening to 
tlie charge of the Begums in the prosecution of 
Wairen Hastings. 

In the national and state legislatures, as well 
as at the vaiious bars in the United States, I have 
heard great volubility, much good sense, and 
some random touches of the pathetick: but in the 
same bodies, I have heard a far greater pi'opor- 
4;ion of puerile rant, or tedious and disgusting 
inanity. Three remarks are true as to almost alJ 
their orators. 

First : they have not a sufficient fund of geneS 
ral knowledge* 



THE BRITISH SPY. 45 

Secondly : they have not the habit of close and 
solid thinking. 

Thirdly : they do not aspire at original orna- 
ments. 

From these three defects, it most generally 
results, that although they pour out, easily enough, 
a torrent of words, yet these are destitute of the 
Jiglit of erudition, the practical utility of just and 
copious thought, or those noA'el and beautiful al- 
lusions and embellishments, -with -which the very 
scenery of the country is so highly calculated to 
inspire them. 

The truth is, my dear S , that this scar- 
city, of genuine and sublime eloquence, is not con- 
fined to the United States: instances of it in any 
civilized country liave always been rare indeed. 
Mr. Blair is certainly correct in the opinion, that a 
state of nature is most favourable to the higher ef- 
forts of the imagination, and the more unrestrain- 
ed and noble raptures of the heart. Civilization, 
•wherever it has gained ground, has interwoven 
with society a habit of artificial and elaborate de- 
corum, which mixes m every operation of life^ 



46 THE BRITISH SPY. 

deters the fancy from ereiy bold enterprise, and 
buries nature under a load of hypocritical cere- 
monies. A man, therefore, in order to be elo- 
quent, has to forget the habits in which he has 
been educated ; and never will he touch his audi- 
ence so exquisitely as when he goes back to the 
primitive simplicity of the patriarchal age. 

I have said that instances of genuine and sub- 
linae eloquence have always been rare in every 
civilized country. It is true that Tully and Pliny 
the younger have, in thrir epistles, represented 
Eome, in their respective days, as swarming with 
orators of the first class : yet from the specimens 
which they themselves have left us, I am led to 
entertain a very humble opinion of ancient elo- 
quence. 

Demosthenes we know has pronounced, not 
the chief, but the sole merit of an orator to con- 
sist in delivery^ or as Lord Verulam translates it, 
in action ; and, although I know that the world 
would proscribe it as a literary heresy, I cannot 
help believing luliy's merit to have been princi- 
pally of that kind. For my own pail, I confess 



THE BRITISH SPY. 47 

very frankly, that I have never met with any 
thing of Jiis, which has, accordmg to tny taste, 
deserved the name of superiour eloquence. His 
style, indeed, is pure, polished, sparkling, full 
and sonorous ; and perhaps deserves all the enco- 
m urns which have been bestowed on it. But an 
oration, certainly, no more deserves the title of 
superiour eloquence, because its style is ornament- 
ed, than the figure of an Apollo would deserve 
the epithet of elegant, merely from the superiour 
texture and flow of the drapery. In reading an 
oration, it is the niind to which 1 look. It is the 
expanse and richness of the concei)tion itself, 
which I regai-d, and not the ghtlering tinsel 
wherein it may be attired. TuUy's orations, ex- 
amined in this spirit, have, with me, sunk far be- 
low the grade at which we have been taught to 
fix them. 

It is true, that at scliool, I learned, like the rest 
of the thewoi'ld, to lisp, "Cicero the orator:" but 
when I grew up and began to judge for myself, I 
opened his volumes again and looked in vain for 
that subiiraity of conception, whicii alls and as- 



43 THE BRITISH SPY. 

tonishes the mind ; that simple pathos whicli finds 
such a sweet welcome in every breast; or that i*e- 
sistless enthusiasm of unaffected passion, which 
takes the heart by storm. On the contrary, let 
me confess to you, that, whatever may be the 
cause, to me he seemed cold and vapid, and un- 
interesting and tiresome : not only destitute of 
that compulsive energy of thought which we look 
for in a great man, but even void of the strong, 
rich and varied coloring of a superiour fancy. His 
masterpiece of composition, his work, De Oratore, 
is, in nty judgment, extremely light and unsub- 
stantial ; and in truth is little more than a tissue 
of rhapsodies, assailing the ear indeed, with plea- 
sant sounds, but leaving few clear and useful tra- 
ces on the mind. Plutarch speaks of his person 
as all grace, his voice as perfect musick, his look 
and gesture as all alive, striking, dignified and 
pecidiarly impressive ; and I inclme to the opinion, 
that to these theatrical advantages, connected 
with the just reliance which the Romans had in his 
patriotism and good judgment, their strong inte- 
rest in the subjects discussed by him, and their 



THE BRITISH SPY. 49 

more intimate acquaintance with the idiom of his 
language, his fame, while limg arose ; and that it 
has been, since, propagated by the schools on ac- 
count of the classick purity and elegance of his^ 
style. 

Many of these remarks are, in my opinion-, 
equally applicable to Demosthenes. He deserves^ 
indeed, the distinction of having more fire and 
less smoke than Tally. But — ^in th& majestick 
march of the mind, in force of thought, and splen- 
dour of imagery, I think, both the orators of 
Greece and Rome eclipsed by more than one 
person within his majesty's dominions. 

Heavens! How should I be anathematized ami 
excommunicated by every pedagogue in Great 
Britain, if these remai'kswere madepublick! S^pi- 
i'its of Car and of Ascham ! have mercy upon me ! 
Wo betide the hand tliat plucks the wizard beaixi 
of hoary errour From lisping infancy to stooping- 
age, the reproaches, the curses of the world slutU 
be upon it ! — But to you, my deai-est &. . . . . ., my 

friend, my preceptor, to you I disclose my opin- 
ions with the same freedom, and lor the same 
3 



50 THE BRITISH SPY. 

purpose, that I would expose my wounds to a sur- 
geon. To you, it is peculiaily proper that I should 
make my appeal on this subject ; for when elo- 
quence is tlie theme, your name is not far off*. 

Tell me, then, you, Avho are capable of doing 
It, wliat is tliis divine eloquence i What the charm 
by wliich the orator binds the senses of his audi- 
ence ; by which he attunes and touches and sweeps 
the human lyre, with the resistless sway and 
master hand of a Timotheus i" Is not the whole 
mystery comprehended in one word — SYMPA- 
THY ? I mean not merely that tender passion 
which quavers the lip and fdls the eye of the babe 
when he looks on the sorrows and tears of ano- 
ther ; but that still more delicate and subtile quali- 
ty, by which we passively catch the very colours, 
momentum and strength of the mind, to Avhose 
operations we are attending ; wliich converts eve- 
ry speaker, to whom Ave listen, into a ProcrusteSy 
and enables him, for the moment, to stretch or 
Itjp our faculties to fit the standard of his owa 
mind. 

This is a very curious subject. I am sometiiaes 



THE BRITISH SPY. 51 

Iialf inclined to adopt the notion stated by our 
great Bacon in his original and masterly treatise 
on the advancement of leamiing. « Fascination, 
" says he, is the power and act of imagination in- 
*' tensive upon other bodies than the body of the 
*'imaginant; wherein the school of Paracelsus 
" and the disciples of pretended natural magick 
" have been so intemperate, as that they have 
** exalted the power of the imagination to be 
." much one with the power of miracle-working 
" faith : others that draw nearer to probability, 
*' calling to their view the secret passages of 
" things and especially of the contagion that pas- 
** seth from body to body, do conceive it should 
** likewise be agreeable to nature, that tliere 
*' should be some transmissions and operations 
"from spirit to spirit, -without the mediation of 
" tlve senses : whence the conceits have grown, 
" iiow almost made civil, of the mastering spirit, 
" and the force of confidence, and the like." This 
motion is farther explained in his Sylva Sylvarum, 
wherein he tells a stoiy of an Egyptian sooth- 
sayer, who made Mark Antony believe, that his 



52 THE BRITISH SPY. 

g-enius, v.hich was otherwise brave and confident, 
was, in the presence of Octavianus Cassar, poor 
and coTH'ardly : and therefore he advised him to 
absent himself as much as he could and remove 
far from him. It turned out, however, that this 
soothsayer was suborned by Cleopatra, who wish- 
ed Antony's company in Egypt. 

Yet, if there be not something of this secret 
intercourse from spirit to spirit, how does it hap- 
pen that one speaker shall gradually invade and 
benumb all the faculties of my soul as if I were 
handUng a toi'pedo ; while another shall awaken 
and arouse me, like the clangour of the martial 
trumpet ? How does it happen that the first shall 
infuse his poor spiiit into my system, lethargize 
my native intellects, and bring down my powers 
exactly to the level of his own ? or that the last 
shall descend upon me like an angel of light, 
breathe new energies into my frame, dilate my 
soul with his own intelligence, exalt me into a 
new and nobler region of thought, snatch me 
from the earth at pleasure, and rap me to the 
seA'enth heaven ? And, what is still more wonder- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 53 

ful, how does it happen that these different effects 
endure so long after the agency of the speaker 
has ceased? Insomuch, that if I sit down to 
any intellectual exercise, after listening to the 
first speaker, ray performance shall be unworthy 
even of me, and the num-fish visible and tan- 
gible in every sentence : whereas, if I enter on 
the same amusement, after having attended to 
the last mentioned orator, I shall be astonished 
at the elevation and vigour of my own thoughts; 
and, if I meet, accidentally, with the same pro- 
duction, a month or t^^'O afterwards, when my 
mind has lost the inspiration, shall scarcely recog- 
nise it for my own work. 

Whence is all tliis? To me it would seem that 
it must proceed either from the subtile commerce 
between the spirits of men, which lord Verulam 
notices, and which enables the speaker, thereby, 
to identify his hearer with himself; or else that 
the mind of man possesses, independently of any 
volition on the part of its proprietor, a species of 
pupillary faculty of dilating and contracting itself, 
in proportion to the pencil of the rays of light 



54 THE BRITISH SPY. 

which the speaker throws upon it ; which dilata- 
tion or contraction, as in tlie case of the eye, can- 
not be immediately and abruptly altered. 

Whatever may be the solution, the fact, I 
think, is certainly as I have stated it. And it is re- 
markable that the same effect is produced, thougji 
perhaps in a less degree, by perusing books into 
which different degrees of spirit and genius have 
been infused. I am acquainted with a gentleman 
who never sits down to a composition, wherein he 
wishes to shine, without previously reading, with 
intense application, half a dozen pages of his fa- 
vourite Bolingbroke. Havmg taken the character 
and impulse of that writer's mind, he declares that 
he feels his pen to flow with a spirit not his own ; 
and that, if, in the course of his work, his powers 
begin to languish, he finds it easy to revive and 
charge them afresh from the same neverfailing 
soui'ce. 

If these things be not visionary, it becomes im- 
portant to a man, for a new reason, what books 
he reads, and what company he keeps, since, ac- 
cording to lord Verulam's notion^ aujnflux of the 



THE BRITISH SPY. 55 

spirits of others may change the native character 
of his heart and understanding, before he is aware 
of it; or, according to the other suggestion, he may 
so habitually contract the pupil of his mind, as to 
be disqualified for the comprehension of a great 
subject, and fit only for microscopick observations. 
Whereas by keeping the company and reading 
the works of men of magnanimity and genius 
only, he may receive their qualities by subtile 
transmission, and eventually, get the eye, the ar- 
dour and the enterprise of an eagle . 

But whither am I wandering ? Permit me to 
return. Admitting the correctness of the princi- 
ples formerly mentioned, it would seem to be a 
fair conclusion that whenever an orator wishes to 
know what effect he has Avrought on his audi- 
ence, he should coolly and conscientiously pro- 
pound to himself this question : Havel, myself^ 
throughout my oration, felt those clear and co- 
gent convictions of judgment, and that pure and 
exalted fire of the soul, with which I wished to 
inspire others ? For, he may rely on it, that he» 
can no more impart (ov to use Bacon's word. 



,Vt3 THE BRITISH SPY. 

transmit) convictions and sensations which he 
himself has not, at the time, sincerely felt, than 
he can convey a clear title to property, in which 
he himself has no title. 

This leads me to remark a defect which I have 
noticed more than once in this country. Follow- 
ing up too closely the cold conceit of the Roman 
division of an oration, the speakers set aside a par- 
ticular part of their discourse, usually the perora- 
tion, in which, they take it into tlieir heads that 
tlicy will he pathetick. Accordingly when they 
)'each this part, whether it he prompted hy the 
feelings or not, a mighty bustle commences. The 
speaker pricks up his ears, erects his chesrt, tosses 
his arms with hysterical vehemence, and says 
every thing which he supposes ought to affect his 
hearers ; but it is all in vain : for it is obvious that 
every thing he says is prompted by the head; 
and, however it may display his ingenuity and 
fertility, however it may appeal to the admiration 
of his hearers, it will never strike deeper. The 
hearts of the audience will refuse all commerce 
♦.•^Kcept with the heoi't of the speaker ; nor, in this 



THE BRITISH SPY. S7 

commerce, is it possible, by any disguise, how- 
ever artful, to impose false ware on them. How- 
ever the speaker may labour to seem to feel, 
however near he may approach to the appear- 
ance of the reality, the heart nevertheless pos- 
sesses a keen unerring sense, which never fails 
to detect the imposture. It would seem as if the 
iieart of man stamps a secret mark on all its ef- 
fusions, which alone can give them cuiTency, and 
which no ingenuity, however adroit, can success* 
fully counterfeit. 

I have been not a little diverted, here, in list- 
ening to some fine orators, who deal almost in- 
tirely in this pathos of the head. They practise 
tlie start, the pause — make ai\ immense parade 
of attitudes and gestures, and seem to imagine 
themselves piercbig the heart with a thousand 
wounds. The heart all the time, developing every 
trick that is played to cajole her, and sitting se- 
rene and composed, looks on and smiles at the 
ridiculous pageant as it passes. 

Nothing can, in my opinion, be more ill judged 
in an orator, than to indulge himself in this idle. 



5B THE Burns H SP\\ 

artificial parade. It is particularly unfortunate in 
an exordium. It is as much as to say caveat audi' 
tor ; and for my own part, the moment I see an 
orator rise with this menacing majesty ; assume a 
Took of solemn wisdom ; stretch forth his right 
arm, like the rube7is dexter of Jove ; and heay 
him open his throat in deep and tragick tone ; 1 
feel myself involuntarily braced and in an atti- 
tude of defence, as if I were going to take a bout 
^\ ith Mendoza. 

The ViFginians boast of an orator of nature, 
whose manner was the reverse of all this; and, 
he is the only orator of whom they do boast, 
with much emphasis. I mean the celebrated PSr 
trick Henry, whom, I regret, that I came to 
this country too late to see. I cannot, indeed, 
easily forgive him, even in the grave, his per- 
sonal instrumentality in separating these fair co- 
lonies from Great Britain, Yet I dare not with- 
liold, fiom the memory of his talents, the tribute 
«f respect to which they are so justly entitled. 

I am told that his general appearance and manr 
Be]-s were tliose of a plaia farmer or planter of 



THE BRITISH SPY. M9 

the back country ; that, in this character, he al- 
ways entered on the exordium of an oration ; dis- 
tiualifying himself, witli looks and expressions of 
humility so lowly an unassuming, as threw every 
heart off its guard and induced his amlience to 
li sten to him, with the same easy openness with 
which they would converse with an honest neigh- 
bour: but, by and by, when it was little expected, 
he would take a flight so liigh, and blaze with a 
splendour so heavenly as filled them with a kind 
of religious awe, and gave him the force and aa- 
thority of a pi'ophet. 

You remember this was the manner of Ulysses; 
commencing with the look depressed, and hesi^ 
tating voice. Yet I dare say Mr. lienry was di^ 
rected to it, not by the example of Ulysses, of 
which it is veiy probable, that, at the commence- 
ment of his career, at least, he was entirely igno- 
rant : but either that it was the genuine, trem- 
bling diffidence, without which, if TuUy may be 
believed, a gi'eat orator never rises ; or else that lie 
was prompted to it by his own sound judgment 
and his intimate knowledge of the huliian heait. 



60 THE BRITISH SPY. 

I have seen the skeletons of some of his na- 
tions. The periods and their members are short, 
quick, eager, palpitating, and are manifestly the 
extemporaneous effusions of a mind deeply con- 
Tinced, and a heart inflamed with zeal for the 
propagation of those convictions. They afford, 
however, a very inadequate sample of his talents : 
the stenographer having never attempted to fol- 
lo^y him, when he arose in the strength and aw- 
ful majesty of his genius. 

I am not a little surprised to find elof^uence of 
tliis high order so negligently cultivated in the 
United States. Considering what a very power- 
ful engine it is in a republick, and how peculiarly 
favourable to its cultui'e, the climate of republicks 
has been always found, I expected to have seen 
in America more votaries to ^lercury than even 
to Plutus. Indeed it would be so sure a road both to 
'wealth and honours, tliatif I coveted either, and 
were an American, I would bend all my powers 
to its acquirement, and try whether I could not 
succeed as well as Demosthenes in vanquishing 
Tsatural imper&etions. Ah ! my dear S , 



THE BRITISH SPY. 6i 

were you a citizen of this country ! You, under the 
influence of whose voice a parliament of Great 
Britain has trembled and shuddered, while her 
refined and enliglitened galleries have wei)t and 
fainted in the excess of feeling '.—what might you 
not accomplish .-' But, for the honour of my coun- 
try, I am much better pleased that you are a 
Briton. 

On the subject of Virginian eloquence, you 
ijhall hear farther from me. In the mean tirae^ 
adieu, my B ....*. , my friend, my father. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE VIRGINIA ARGX^. 
Sir, 

A.S the theoiy of the earth derives importance 
from its dignity, if not from its utility, and has of 
late years given birth to many ingenious specu- 
lations, I shall offer no apology for troubling you 
with the following remarks, which were sug- 
gested by an essay, in last Wednesday's Argus, 
entitled " The British Spy." 

Sea shells and other max'ine productions, dif- 
fering in no respect from those which now exist 
in their native element, have been found in every 
csfplored part of the globe. They are found, too, 
in the highest as well as in the lowest situations: 
on the loftiest mountains of Europe, and the still 
loftier Andes of South America. To go no farther 
from home, our OAvn Allegany abounds with them. 
How were these substances separated from their 
parent ocean ? Do they still remain in their pri- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 63 

mitive beds ? and has the water deserted them ? 
or have they deserted the water ? These ques- 
tions, differently answered, give rise to different 
Iheories. 

Among these theories, that of the Count dc 
Biiffon stands conspicuous. Adorned with all the 
gi'aces of style, and borrowing a lustre from his 
other splendid productions, it has long had its 
full share of admirers. After exhibiting new 
proofs of a former submersion, in which he dis- 
covers great ingenuity, and is certainly entitled to 
great praise, he proceeds to account for the earth 
in its present form, by a natural operation of the 
ocean which covered it. This hypothesis, which 
the British Spy has partially adopted, i liable te 
many objections, which, to me at least, are insu- 
perable. I will briefly notice some of the most 
obvious. 

Although alluvion may account for small ac- 
cessions of soil nearly on a level with the ocean, 
it cannot explain the formation of mountains. It 
is contrary to all the known laws of nature to 



64 THE BRITISH SPY. 

suppose tliat a fluid could lift, so far above its &wi\ 
level, bodies many times heavier thau itself. 

Again, if the ocean, asBuftoa maintains, have a 
tendency to Avear away all points and eminences 
over which it passes, it would exert this tendency 
on the mountains itself had formed ; or rather, it 
would prevent their formation. It is surely in- . 
consistent to suppose the ocean would produce 
mountains, and at the same time w ear away those 
that already existed. Indeed, the author himself 
seemed to be aware of the invincible objections 
to this part of his theory, and endeavours to 
evade their force by sinking a part of the earth, 
in the cavity occasioned by which, the superflu- 
ous waters find a sufficient receptacle ; thus aban- 
doning the agency of alluvion, and adopting a new 
and totally different hypothesis. 

But while marine substances are found far 
above theii- proper element, vegetable bodies are 
often found far belotv the seat of their productioUo 
In Europe they often meet with wood, at great 
depths of the earth, in a state of perfect pre- 
servation, and in sinking wells, in this country. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 6a 

trunks of trees frequently obstruct the progress 
of the work. A Mr. Peters, of Harrison county, 
not long since, met with pieces of pine, twenty 
feet below the surface, on a hill of considerable 
elevation, and at a distance from any water- 
eoui'se. In this town, leaves, believed to be those 
of the hazle, were found mingled with marine 
productions. These vegetable matters must have 
been once exposed to air, heat and light, to have 
attained the state in which they Avere found ; and 
the same exposure would have afterwards caused 
their decay, unless their interment had been sud- 
den and complete. Bones, shells and other ex- 
traneous substances, are often found bedded in 
marble and other hard bodies ; and I myself have 
seen a specimen of those human bones, which ia 
the fortifications of Cibraltar are often found in- 
corporated with the solid rock. What less than 
some great throe of nature, or some mighty 
agent, now dormant and unknown, could have 
produced the general bouleversement which these 
appearances indicate ? 

But the hjTJothe^cal reasoning of Monsieur de 



66 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Buffon is founded on a fact no less hypothetical. 
The arguments, in favour of a general current to 
the west, are 1 confess, very cogent, and would be 
convincing but for the following difficulties. 

1. If the operation of the sun and moon, in 
producing alternate elevations and depressions 
of the ocean, produce also a current, the force of 
this cuiTent will be in proportion to the mass of 
vvater thus raised and depressed. Now, contraiy 
to the assertion of Buffon, the tides are highest 
in high latitudes, and gradually diminisli towards 
the equator ; where I believe they hardly exceed 
a foot. By the obser^'ations of Captain Cook, the 
same diiference exists in the Pacifick ocean as was 
long known in the Atlantic. If then, there be a 
general current to the west, it should be strongest 
in high latitudes and weakest under the lin^ 
But the contrary is the fact. No general current 
to the west is found without the tropicks ; and that 
which prevails irregularly between them is usu- 
ally and rationally ascribed to the trade winds. 

2. If this supposed current existed, its effecfc 
would be readily perceived by our navigators in 



THE BRITISH SPY. 6? 

the difference of their passages to and from Eu- 
rope ; but, the one before referred to excepted, 
they meet with nothing of the kind. A current, 
at the rate of one mile an hour, would make a 
difFerente of near two thousand miles between an 
ordinary voyage to and from Europe, 

3. By actual observations, detailed in the se- 
cond volume of the Philosophical Transactions, 
the prevailing currents about some islands in the 
Atlautick Ocean are to the east. At Owhyhee, 
which lies within the tropicks, and nearly in the 
middle of the Pacifick Ocean, Captain Cook ob- 
served the current to set, without any regularity, 
sometimes to the west, and sometimes to the 
east. 

4. But one argument may be deemed conclu«- 
sive. The air is a fluid at least as sensible to the 
gravitating power of the planets as the Ocean, 
and, like that, must also have its tides. If, on the 
one hand, the tides of the au* are more liable to 
be disturbed by its compressibility, by partial 
rarefaction or condensation, its obstacles, on the 
other hand, to a free motion round the earth. 



68 THE BRITISH SPY. 

are comparatively inconsiderable. Its course is 
somewhat impeded, but never arrested. If then 
such a general law existed, as is contended for, 
there would be, either a steady east wuid, or 
greater ftow of air from that quarter than from 
the west, in every climate of the globe. But this 
is the case only between the tropicks ; and the pre- 
valence of the east wind, in that region, has been 
almost universally ascribed to rarefaction by heat, 
since no other solution can accounj: for the sea 
and land breezes, monsoons, and other pheno- 
mena of those climates. 

From these considerations 1 am disposed to 
think, that tliere is no uniform current to the 
west; or that it is too inconsiderable to have any 
effect on the figure of the earth. Admitting the 
existence of a general current, it may be merely 
supei'ficial. Currents, whose force gradually di- 
minishes from the surface downwards, are known 
to exist ; and the practice of seamen, when they 
wish " to try the current," is evidently founded 
on the belief that they do not extend to great 
depths. The accession of watei' by the tides is 



THE BRITISH SPY. 69 

too small to require a general movement of the 
ocean to its bottom. 

In weighing the probability of a general cur- 
rent to the west, I have confined myself to the 
operation of the tides; as the mere motion of the 
earth, either in its orbit, or on its axis, can have 
no possible effect tliis way. This motion is com- 
municated to every part of the eai'th, whether 
solid or fluid; and while it continues equable, 
they are both affected alike, and their relative 
situations remain the same. So well established 
a principle must have been contested by the Bri- 
tish Spy through mere inadvertance. 

If, after all that ha& been said, arguments, w 
fevour of a current from the surface to the bot- 
tom, be deemed conclusive, it is worth while to 
inquire into its probable effects. 

The British Spy supposes that this general 
•urrent enlai-ges both the eastern and western 
coasts of continents ; in which hypothesis, he dif- 
fers less from Buflbn tlian that elegant but fanei- 
ful theorist differs from hnnself For, in his theory 
on the formation of the planets, he advances thgf 



70 THE BRITISH SPY. 

ihe ocean is continually wearing away the east- 
ern coasts, and by a process, which he does not 
even hint at, enlarging the western ; and that 
Asia is an older country than Europe. But in a 
subsequent work, his Epochs, he maintains the 
direct reverse, and mentions the abruptness of 
the western, and the greater number of islands 
of the eastern coasts, as evidences that the former 
have been abraded by the ocean. 

But I find neither reasoning nor fact to war- 
rant either of these conclusions. It has been ob- 
sei'ved that a sliore forms a convex outline where 
it gains on the ocean, and a concave where it 
loses. On inspecting the map of tire world, we 
perceive nothing, which by this standard indi- 
cates a greater increase on one continent than on 
the other, or even any increase at all. We see no 
vast prominence of coast under the line ; but on 
taking both shores of the ocean, in both hemis- 
phereSf into comparison, we find that the convexi- 
ties on the western side are balanced by equal 
convexities on the eastern. Besides, it is clear 
ttiat in proportion as the contents of the ocean 



THE BRITISH SPY. 71 

are cast on the land, in the same degree it be- 
comes deeper, and its shores more steep and 
abrupt. This is as true of the ocean as it is of 
a ditch. By this increasing decUvity of growing 
shores, the additional gravity to be overcome 
Avill, in time, check the alluvion of any current, 
however strong. An opposite equalizing tenden- 
cy occiu's, where the coast is worn away by the 
ocean. Successive fragments of rocks and pre- 
cipices, by sloping the shore, gradually abate the 
impetus of the waters, until the coast attains that 
due inclination, by which, the gi'avity to be over- 
come exactly counterbalances the projectile force 
of the ocean. Without doubt, small variations 
continually take place in the outline of all coasts ; 
but the equilibrium for which I contend, is found- 
ed on correct principles ; and every coast, v/he- 
ther eastern or western, approaches to that form, 
if it have not already attained it, when what it 
loses by the ocean will be precisely equal to what 
ii gains. 

It should be remarked that Buffon , in his last 
addition to liis TheoriCf conscious of the insuffi- 



72 THE BRITISH SP^. 

ciency of alluvion in the formalion of continents, 
supposes that the cavities, Avith which the earth 
abounds, are continually falling in, and, from the 
consequent retreat of the ocean, that continents 
are continually approximating. This conjecture 
certainly renders his theory more consistent; 
but it substitutes a cause for the emersion of the 
earth totally different from his first hypothesis of 
alluvion ; and it has been that alone which I have 
considered. This last supposition is merely gra- 
tuitous ; as neither observation nor history alFoi-d 
us any proofs of the existecce of these immen* 
caverns, or of aiiy general retreat of the ocean. 

For the reasons which I have given, and foi? 
many more, the theorv- of this celebrated natural- 
ist has long been deemed both improbable and in- 
adequate, and is nov/ confined to the merit, (no 
small merit by the by) of having collected valua- 
ble materials, aud detected the fallacies of Bur- 
net, Woodward and other dreamers on the sub- 
ject. It has accordingly given place to new theo- 
lies, more consistent at least, if not more satis- 
^ctory. Volcanoes, an irdense heat in the centre 



THE BRITISH SPY. 73 

of the earth, the recrements of animals and ve- 
getables, have been employed, as separate or 
joint agents, by the speculators on this curious 
subject. Dr. Hutton, by far the most celebrated 
of these, supposes the exuviae of shell fish to have 
constituted the basis of the earth ; and that it has 
assumed its present form and appearance by the 
fusion produced by the earth's internal heat. 
He supports this opinion by a train of elaborate 
reasoning, and a cheirJcal examination of the bo- 
dies wliich compose the outer crust of the earth. 
I regret that I am acquainted with the work only 
at second hand, ButI believe that even this tlieo- 
ry, ingenious and scientifick as it is, gives little 
more general satisfaction than those which pre- 
ceded it. Itis, in common with the other late liy- 
potheses, opposed by the fine reasoning of Buf- 
fon, in favour of tlie immediate action of water in 
proilucing the cori'espondent angles of mountains, 
their waving outliiie, parallel strata. Sec. as v/ell 
as by many of the lacts I have glanced at ; and it 
is moreover, said to be contradicted by some che- 
mical experiments, at once pertinent and clear, 
4 



74 THE BRITISH SPY. 

On the whole, then, I fear we have not yet ar- 
rived at that certainty Avliich will satisfy the in- 
quii'er "vvho is neither enamoured with tJie fan- 
cies of his own brain, nor seduced by the elo- 
quence of othei*s ; and thex'efore, to use the words 
of an elegant writerof our own coiintry, wlio dis- 
covers the Fame acuteness, the same philosophick 
caution on this as on other occasions, *' we must 
*'be contented to acknowledge that tliis great 
'•phenomenon is, as yet, unsolved. Ignorance is 
*' preferable to errour ; and he is less remote from 
"the truth, who believes nothing, than he wlio 
" believes what is wrong." 

Before we can obtain a sober conviction on the 
subject, or even properly compare the probability 
of the respective theories, many questions nov 
cor> tested must be settled ; new facts must be dis- 
covered; new powers of nature developed. 

How far does the power of aqueous solution and 
of crystallization extend ? Does the eai-th borrow 
all its heat from the sun ? or has it a perennial 
source in its own bowels ? are there general cur- 
retits in the ocean ? If so, what are tjieir coursef, 



THE BRITISH SPY. 75 

periods and strength ? It is clear that ever}- rain 
that falls, every wind that blows, transports some 
portion of the earth we inhabit to the ocean. Is 
there any secret and magical process in nature, 
as some have supposed, by wluch this perpetual 
waste is perpetually repaired ? and do mountains 
receive accessions by rain, by attraction, or any 
other mode equal to what they evidently lose ? 
Again, water is converted into vegetables, ve- 
getables into animals, and both of these again into 
earth. Is this same earth reconverted into water, 
and by one unvaried round of mutation, each 
presened in its present proportion to all eter- 
nity ? 

Science, with an ardour of inquiry never before 
known, and a daily increase of materials, ad- 
vances with hasty steps to answer these pre- 
liminary questions; but till they are solved, I in- 
cline to think that every theory is premature, 
and shall, therefore, remain satisfied with the 
safe, but humble character of 

AN INQUIRER. 



LETTER IV. 

Richmond, September 22, 

JL HA'^Til just returned, n^y dear S , 

from an interesting morning's ride. My object 
was to visit the site of the Indian town, Powha- 
tan ; whicli you will remember was the meti'opo- 
lis of the dominions of Pocahuntas' father, and, 
very probably, the birthplace of that celebrated 
princess. 

The town was built on the river, about tvv6 
miles below the ground now occuj/ied by Rich- 
mond : that is, about two miles below the head of 
tide water. The land whereon it stood is, at pre- 
sent, part of a very beautiful and valuable farm 
belonging to a gentleman by the name of Wil- 
liam Mayo. 

Aware of tlie slight manner in which the In- 
dians have always constructed their habitations, 
I was not at all disi-ppointed in finding no vestige 
of the old town. But as I traversed the ground 



THE BRITISH SPY. TT 

over vhicli Pocahuntas had so often bounded 
and frolicked in the spriglitly morning of her 
youth, I could not help recalling the principal 
features of her Iiistory, and heaving a sigh of 
mingled pity and veneration to her memory. 

Good Heaven ! What an eventful life was hers! 
To speak of nothing else, the arrival of the Eng- 
lish in her father's dominions must have appeared 
(as indeed it turned out to be) a most porten- 
tous phenomenon. It is not easy for us to con- 
ceive the amazement and consternation which 
must have filled her mind and that of her nation 
at the first appearance of our countrymen. Their 
great sliip, with all her sails spread, advancing in 
solemn majesty to the shore ; tlieir complexion ; 
their dress ; their language ; their domestick ani- 
mals ; their cargo of new and glitteting wealth ; 
and tlien the thunder and irresistible force of 
their artillery ; tiie distant country announced by 
them, far beyond the great water, of which the 
oldest Indian had never heard, or thought, or 
dreamed — all this was so new, so wonderful, so 
tremendous, that I do seriously suppose, the per- 



78 THE BRITISH SPY. 

sonal descent of an army of Milton's celestial an- 
gels, robed in light, sporting in the bright beams 
of the sun and redoubling their splendour, making 
divine harmony with their golden hai-ps, or play- 
ing with the holt and chasing tlie rapid liglitning 
of heaven, would excite not more astonishment in 
Great Britain, than did the debarkation of the 
English among the aborigines of Virginia. 

Poor Indians ! Where are they now ? Indeed, 
my dear S , thJs is a truly afflicting con- 
sideration. The people here may say what they 
please ; but, on the principles of eternal truth and 
justice, they have no right to this country. They 
say that they have bought it — bought it ! Yes ;— 
of whom ? — Of the poor trembling natives who 
knew that refusal would be vain ; and who strove 
to make a merit of necessity by seeming to yield 
with grace, what they knew that they had not 
the power to retain. Such a bargain might appease 
the conscience of a gentleman of the green bag, 
<* Avorn and hackneyed" in the arts and frauds of 
his profession; but in heaven's chancery, my 



THE BRITISH SPY. 79 

S ...... ., there can be little doubt that it has 

been long since set aside on the ground of duress. 

Poor wretches ! No wonder that they are so 
implacably vindictive against the white people; 
no wonder that the rage of resentment is handed 
down from generation to generation ; no wonder 
that they refuse to associate and mix permanently 
with their unjust and cruel invaders and exter- 
minators ; no wonder that hi the unabating spite 
and frenzy of conscious impotence, they wage an 
eternal war, as well as they are able ; that tliey 
triumph in the rare opportunity of revenge ; that 
Ihcy dance, sing and rejoice, as the victim shrieks 
and faints amid the fiames, when they imagine 
all the crimes of their oppressors collected on his- 
head, and fancy the spirits of their injured fore- 
fathers hovering over the scene, smiling with fe- 
rocious delight at the grateful spectacle, and feast- 
ing on the precious odour as it i-ises from the 
burning blood of the white man. 

Yet the people, here, affect to wonder that the 
Indians are so very unsusceptible of civilization; 
or, in other words, that " they so obst nately re- 



80 THE BRITISH SPY. 

fuse to adopt the manners of the vliite men. Go, 
^'iigiiiian ; erase, from the Indian nation, the tra- 
dition of their wrongs; make them forget, if you 
can, that once this eliarming- country was theirs ; 
thtt over these fields and throngli these foi'ests, 
their heloved forefathers, once, in careless gaiety, 
})iu-sucd theh* sports and hunted their game ; that 
every returning day found them the sole, the 
peaceful, the happy proprietoi-s of this extensive 
and beautiful domain. Ma'^e them forget too, if 
you can, tiikt in the midst of all this innocence, 
simplicity and bliss — the white man came ; and lo ! 
— the animated chase, the feast, the daiwie, the 
song of fearless, thoughtless joy w ere over ; tliat 
over since, they have been i"nade to drink of the 
hlliei- cup of humiliation ; treated like dugs ; their 
lives, their liberties, the sport of the white men ; 
iheir counti-y and the graves of their fathers torn 
from them, in cruel succession : until, driven from 
I'iver to river, from forest to forest, and through 
a period of two hundred years, rolled l)ack, na- 
tion upon nation, tliey find themselves fugitives, 
vagrants arid strangers in theii' own country, and 



THE BRITISH SPY. 51 

look forward to the certain period when their 
descendants will be totally extinguished by wars, 
driven at the point of the bayonet into the wes- 
tern ocean, or reduced to a fate still more de- 
plorable and horrid, the condition of slaves. Go, 
administer the cup of oblivion to recollections 
and anticipations like tliese, and then you will 
cease to complain that the Indian refuses to be 
civilized. But until then, surely it is nothing 
wonderful that a nation even yet bleeding afresh, 
from the memory of ancient wrongs, perpetually 
agonized by new outrages, and goaded into des- 
peration and madness at the prospect of the cer- 
tain ruin, which awaits their descendants, should 
hate the authors of their miseries, of their deso- 
lation, their destruction ; should hate their man- 
ners, hate their colour, their language, their name, 
and eveiy thing that belongs to them. No; ne- 
ver, until time shall Avear out the history of their 
sorrows and tlieir sufferings, Avill tlie Indian be 
brought to love the white man, and to imitate his 
manners. 

Great god ! To reflect, my S ..... . , that th-- 

4* 



82 THE BRITISH SPY. 

authors of all these wrongs were our own couu- 
trymen, our forefathers, professors of the meek 
and benevolent religion of Jesus ! O ! it was impi- 
ous ; it was unmanly ; poor and pitiful ! Gracious 
Heaven ! what had these poor people done ? The 
simple inhabitants of these peaceful plains, what 
urongj what injury, had they offered to the Eng- 
lish ? My soul melts with pity and shame. 

As for the present inhablt^ts, it must be granfi- 
ed that they are comparatively innocent : unless 
indeed they also have encroached under the 
•uise of treaties, which they themselves have 
previously contrived to render expedient or ne- 
cessary to the Indians. 

Whether this have been the case or not, I am 
loo much a stranger to the inteiiour transactions 
of this country to decide. But it seems to me that 
were I a president of the United Sti^tcs, I would 
glory in going to the Indians, throwing myself on 
my knees before them, and saying to them, " In- 
" dians, friends, brothers, O ! foigivc my coun- 
'*trymen ! Deeply have our foi-efathers wronged 
**you; and they have forced us to eotitinue thf 



THE BRITISH SPY. 83 

"wrong. Reflect brothers ; it was not our fault 
" that we were born in your country ; but now 
"we have no other home; Ave have no wliere 
"else to rest our feet. Will you not, then, per- 
<►' mit us to remain ? Can you not forgive even us 
"innocent as we are ? If you can, O! come to our 
"l)OSoms; be, indeed, our brothers; and since 
*' there is room enough for us all, give us a home 
*^in your land. Ictus be children of the same 
"affectionate family." I believe that a magna- 
nimity of sentiment like this, followed up b}'' a 
correspondent greatness of conduct on the part 
of the people of the United States, would go far- 
ther to bury the tomahawk and praduee a fra- 
ternization with the Indians, than all the pre- 
sents, treaties and missionaries that can be era- 
ployed ; dashed and defeated as these latter means 
always are, by a claim of rights on the part of the 
white people which the Indians know to be false 
and baseless. Let me not be told that the Indians 
are too dark and fierce to be affected by generous 
and noble sentiments. I will not believe it. Mag- 
nanimity can never be lost on a nation which has 



■6i THE BRITISH SPY. 

produced an Alknomok, a Logan, and a Poea- 
buntas 

The repetition of the name of this amiable 
princess brings me back to the point from which 
I digressed. I wonder that the Virginians, fond as 
they are of anniversaries, have instituted no fes- 
tival or order in honoui- of her memory. For my 
own part, I have little doubt, from the histories 
which we have of the first attempts at colonising 
their country, that Poeahuntas deserves to be 
considered as the patron deity of the enterprise. 
When it is remembered how long the colony 
struggled to get a footing; hoAv often sickness or 
famine, neglect at home, mismanagement here, 
and the liostillties of the natives, brought it to the 
brink of ruin; through what a tedious lapse of 
time, it alternately languished and revived, sunk 
and rose, sometimes hanging, like Addison's lamp, 
'♦'quivering at a point," then suddenly shooting 
up into a sickly and shortlived flame; in one 
woixl, when we recollect how near and how often 
it verged towards total extinction, maugre the 
patronage of Poeahuntas ; there is the strongest 



THE BRITISH SPY. 85 

ueason to believe that, but for her piitronage, the 
anniversary cannon of the fourth of July would 
never have resounded throughout the United 
States. 

It is not probable, that this sensible and amiable 
woman, perceiving the supeinority of the Eu- 
ropeans, foreseeing the probability of the subju- 
gation of her countrymen, and anxious as well to 
soften their destiny, as to save the needless ef- 
fusion of human blood, desired, by her mannage 
with Mr. Rolfe, to hasten the abolition of all dis- 
tinction between Indians and white men ; to bind 
their interests and affections by the nearest and 
most endearing ties, and to make them regard 
themselves, as one people, the children of the 
same great family ? If such were her wise and 
benevolent views, and I have no doubt but they 
were, how poorly were they backed by the Bri- 
tish court ? No wonder at the resentment and in- 
dignation with which she saw them neglected; 
no wonder at the bitterness of the disappointment 
and vexation which she expressed to captain 
Smith, in London, arising as well from the cold 



86 THE BRITISH SPY. 

reception which she herself had met, as from 
the contemptuous and insulting point of view in 
which she found that her nation was regarded. 

Unfortunate princess ! She deserved a hapv)ier 
fate ! But I am consoled hy tljese reflections : first, 
that slie sees her descendants among the most 
respectable families in Virginia ; and that they are 
not only superiour to the false shame of disavow- 
ing her as their ancestor; bat that they pride 
themseWes, and with reason too, on the honoui* 
of their descent ; secondly, that she herself has 
gone to a country, where she finds her noble 
wishes realized ; whei'e the distinction of colour is 
no more ; but where indeed, it is perfectly imma- 
terial " what complexion an Indian or an African 
*' sun may have burned" on the pilgrim. 

Adieu, my dearS This trjun of thought 

has destroyed the tone of my spirits ; when I re- 
cover them, you shall hear farther from me. Once 
more, adieu. 



LETTER v.* 

RicfcmoncI, September 25. 

X HIS town, my dear S , is the resi- 
dence of several conspicuous characters; some of 
whose names we have heard on the other side of 
the Atlant ck. You shall be better acquainted with 
them before we finish this correspondence. For 
the present, permit me to introduce to your ac- 
quaintance, the of the commonwealth 

of Virginia, and the of the Uni- 
ted States. 

These gentlemen are eminent political oppo- 
nents ; the first belonging to the republican, the 
latter leading the van of the federal, party. Such 
is the interest which they both have in the con- 

* The donee of the manuscript begs that he may not be 
eonsidered as responsible for tlie accuracy with which cer- 
tain characters are delineated in this letter. He selects it 
purely for the advantage whieli, he supposes, youthful 
readers may derive from the writer's reflections on the 
characters attempted to be drawn by liim. 



88 THE BRITISH SPY. 

jRdence and affections of thtir respective parties, 
that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for any 
Virginian to delineate either of their characters 
justly. Friendship or hostility would be almost 
sure to overcharge the picture. But for me, I 
have so little connexion with this country, or her 
concerns, either at present or in prospect, that I 
believe I can look on her most exalted characters 
M'lthout envy, or prejudice of any kind ; and di'aw 
them with the same cool and philosophick im- 
partialitj', as if I wei'e a sojourner from another 
planet. If I fail in the delineation, the fault must 
be in the hand or in the head, in the pencil or the 
judgment : and not in any prepossession near my 
heart. 

I ciioose to bring those two characters, before 
you, together ; because they exhibit, with great 
rlvacity, an intellectual Phenomenon, which I have 
noticed more than once before ; and in tlie so- 
lution of which I should be pleased to see yom* 
pen emjiloyed : I mean the very different celei-ity 
in the movement of two sound minds, wliich on 
all subjects, wherein there is no mixture of party 



TIIE KUITISn SPY. Sf 

■zeal, will ultimately come to the same just con- 
clusion. What a pity it is, tliat Mr. Locke, -while 
he was flissecting the liuman understanding;, with 
such skill and felicity, did not advert to this 
characteristick variance in the minds of men. It 
v.ould have hcen in his power, by developing- its 
causes, either to point to the remedy, if it exist at 
all, or to relieve the man of slow mind, from the 
labour of fruitless experiments, by showing the 
total impracticability of his cure. But, to oui* 
gentlemen ; and in order that jou may know them 
the more intimately, I will endeavour to prefix to 
each character a portrait of the person. 

The of this commonwealth is the 

same who was, not many years 

ago, the at Paris. His present office is 

sufficient evidence of the estimation in which he 
is held by his native state. In his stature, he is 
about the middle height of men, rather firmly 
set, with nothing farther remarkable in his per- 
son, except his muscular compactness and appa- 
rent ability to endure labour. His countenance, 
vlien grave, has rather the expression of stern- 



90 THE BRITISH SPY. 

iiess and irascibility : a smile howevei* (and a smile 
is not unusual with him in a social circle) lights 
it up to very high advantage, and gives it a most 
impressive and engaging air of suavity and bene- 
volence. Judging merely from his countenance, 
he is between the ages of forty-five and fifty 
years. His dress and personal appeai-ance are 
those of a plain and modest gentleman. He is a 
man of soft, polite and even assiduous attentions; 
but these, although they are always Mell timed, 
judicious,, and evidently the ofispring of an obli- 
ging and philanthi'opick temper, are never per- 
formed with the striking and captivating graces 
of a Alarlborough or a Bolingbroke. To be plain, 
there is often in his manner an inartificial and 
even an awkward simplicity, which, while it pro- 
vokes the smile of a more polished person, forces 

him to the opinion, that Mr is a man of 

a most sincere and artless soul. 

Nature has given him a mind neither rapid 
«or rich ; and therefore, he cannot shine on a sub- 
ject which is entirely new to him. But to compen- 
sate hitn for this, he is endued with a spirit of 



THE BRITISH SPY. n 

generous and restless emulation, a judgment solid, 
strong and clear, and a habit of ajipiication, which 
jio difficulties can shake ; no labours can tire. 

With ihese aids, simply, he has qualified him- 
self for the first honours of this country; and 
presents a most happy illustration of the truth of 
the maxim, Qmsque,su<eforttmce,faber. For his 
emulation has urged him to perpetiial and unre- 
mitting inquiry ; his patient and unweained indus- 
try has concentrated before him all the lights 
■which others have thrown on the subjects of his 
consideration, together with all those which his 
own mind, by repeated efforts, is enabled to 
strike ; while his sober, steady and faithful judg- 
ment has saved him from the common eiTour of 
more quick and brilliant geniuses : the too hasty 
adoption of specious, but false conclusions. 

These qualities render him a safe and an able 
counsellor. And by their constant exertion, he 
has amassed a store of knowledge, which, having 
passed, seven times, tlirough the crucible, is al- 
most as highly corrected, as human knowledge 
oan be : and which certainly, may be much more 



92 THE Biirnsii spy. 

safelj relied on, than llie spontaneous and luxu- 
riaiit gt&v.lh of a more i'ertile, Ijut less chastened 
mind — *'a wild, where weeds and flowers pro- 
miscuous shod." 

Having' engaged very early, first in tlte life of a 
soldiej*, then of a statesman, then of a laborious 
practitioner of the law, and finally, again of a po- 
litician, his intellectual operations have been al- 
most entirely confined to juridical and political 
topicks. Indeed, it is easy to pei'ceive, tliat the 
mind of a man, engaged in so active a life, must 
possess more native suppleness, versatility and 

vigour, than that of IMr , to be able to 

make an advautagcous tour of the sciences in the 
rare interval of importunate duties. It is possil)le 
that the early habit of contemplating subjects as 
expanded as the earth itself, with all the relative 
interests of the great nations tliereof, may have 
inspired him with an indifference, perhaps an in- 
aptitude, for mei'e points of literature. Algernon 
Sidney has said that he deems all studies unwor- 
thy the serious regard of a man, except the study 
©f the principles of just government ; and Mr. 



THE BRITISH SPY. OS 

, perhaps, concurs with our countrymen in 

tills as well as in his other principles. Whatever 
may have been the occasion, his acquaintance 
with the fine arts is certainly very limited and 
supei'ficial ; but, making allowances for his bias to- 
wards republicanism, he is a profound and even 
an eloquent statesman. 

Knowing him to be attached to that political 
party, who, by their opponents, are called some- 
times democrats, sometimes jacobins ; and aware 
also, that he was a man of warm and even ai-dent 
temper, I dreaded much, when I first entered his 
company, that I should have been shocked and 
disgusted with the narrow, virulent and rancorous 
invectives of party animosity.* How agreeably, 
how delightfully, was I disappointed ! Not one 
sentiment of intolerance polluted his lips. On tlie 
contrary, whether they be the ofrspring of ra- 
tional induction, of the habit of surveying men 
and things on a great scale, of native magnanimi- 

* The cloven foot of the Briton is visible ; or, else, why 
from tlie pvemists could he have expected such a conse- 
quence? 



94 THE BRITISH SPY. 

iy, or of a combination of all those causes, his 
principles, as far as they were exhibited to me, 
were forbearing, liberal, widely extended and 
great. 

As the elevated ground, which he already 
holds, has been gained merely by the dint of ap- 
plication ; as every new step which he mounts be- 
comes a mean of increasing his powers still far- 
ther, l;y opening a wider horizon to his view, and 
thus stimulating his enterprise afresh, reinvigo- 
rating his habits, multiplying the materials and 
extending the range of his knowledge ; it Avould 
b^ matter of no surpi'ise to me, if, before his 
death, tlie woi'ld should see him at the head of 
the American administration So much for the 

of the commonwealth of Virginia; a 

living, an honourable, an illustrious monument of 
self created eminence, woi-th and greatness! 

Let us now change the scene and lead forward 
a very different character indeed : a truant, but a 
highly favoured pupil of nature. It would seem as 
if this capricious goddess had finished the two 
characters, purely with the view of exhibiting a 



THE BRITISH SPY. 95 

vivid contrast. Nor is this contrast confined to 
their minds. 

The of the United States is 

in his person, tall, raeagi'e,enaaciated ; his muscles 
relaxed, and his joints so loosely connected, as 
not only to disqualify him, apparently, for any 
vigorous exertion of body, but to destroy every 
thing like elegance and harmony in his air and 
movements. Indeed, in his whole appearance, 
and demeanour ; dress, attitudes, gesture ; sitting, 
standing or walking; he is as far removed from the 
idolized graces of lord Chestei'field, as any other 
gentleman on earth. To continue the portrait : his 
head and face are small in proportion to his 
height; his complexion swarthy ; the muscles of 
his face, being relaxed, give him the appearance 
of a man of fifty years of age, nor can he be much 
younger; his countenance has a faithful expression 
of great good humour and hilarity ; while his black 
eyes — that unerring index — possess an irradiating 
spirit, which proclaims the imperial powers of the 
mind that sits inthroned within. 

This extraordinaiy man, v.ithout the aid of 



§6 THE BRITISH SPY. 

fanc}', without the advantages of pei'son, voice, 
attitude, gesture, or any of the ornaments of un 
orator, deserves to be considered as one of the 
inost eloquent men in the world ; if eloquence may 
be said to consist in the power of seizing the at- 
tention with irresistible force, and never permit- 
ting it to elude the grasp, until the hearer has re- 
ceived the conviction which the speaker intend?. 

As to his person, it has already been described. 
His voice is dry, and hard ; his att tude, in his most 
effective orations, was often extremely awkward; 
as it was not unusual for him to stand with liis 
left foot in advance; wliile all his gesture pro- 
ceeded from his rigiit ai-m, and consisted merely 
in a vehement, peri)endieular swing of it, from 
about the elevation of his liead, to tlie bai', behind 
which he Avas accustomed to stand. 

As to fancy, if she hold a seat in his mind at 
all, which I very much doubt, his gigantick genius 
tramples witli disdain, on all her flower-decked 
plats and blooming parterres. How then, you will 
ask, with a look of incredulotis curiosity, how is it 
possible, that such a man can hold the attention 



'JTHE BRITISH SPY. 9T 

of an audience inchained, through a speech of 
even ordinary length ! I will tell you. 

He possesses one original, and, almost, super- 
natural faculty : the faculty of developing a sub- 
ject by a single glance of his mind, and detecting 
at once, the very point on which every controversy 
depends. No matter, what the question : though 
ten times more knotty than "the gnarled oak," 
the lightning of heaven is not more rapid nor 
moi'e resistless, than his astonishing penetration. 
Xor does the exercise of it seem to cost him an 
effort. On the contrary, it is as easy as vision. I 
am persuaded that his eyes do not fly over a land- 
scape and take in its various objects with moi*e 
promptitude and facility, than his mind em- 
braces and analyzes the most complex subject. 

Possessing while at the bar this intellectual 
elevation, which enabled him to look down and 
comprehend the whole ground at once, he de- 
termined immediately and without difficulty, on 
which side the question might be most advan- 
tageously approached and assailed. In a bad cause, 

his art consisted in laying liis premises so remote- 
5 



98 THE BRITISH SPY. 

ly from the point directly in debate, or else in 
terms so general and so specious, that the hear- 
er, seeing no consequence which could be drawn 
from them, was just as willing to admit them as 
aot ; but, his premises once admitted, the demon- 
stration, however distant, followed as certainly, 
as cogently, as inevitably, as any demonstration 
in Euclid. 

All his eloquence consists in the apparently 
deep self-conviction, and emphatick eai'nestness 
of his manner ; the correspondent simplicity and 
energy of his style ; the close and logical con- 
nexion of liis thoughts; and the easy gradations by 
which he opens his lights on the attentive minds 
«f his hearers. 

The audience are never permitted to pause 
for a moment. There is no stopping to weave 
garlands of flowers, to hang in festoons^ ai'ound a 
favourite argument. On the contrary, every sen- 
tence is progressive ; every idea sheds new light 
on the subject ; the listener is kept perpetually 
in that sweetly pleasurable vibration, with which 
t|je iniad of man always receives new truths; th© 



THE BRITISH SPY. 99 

dawn advances in easy but unremitting pace ; the 
subject opens gradually on the view ; until, rising, 
in Wgh relief, in all its native colours and propoi"- 
tions, the argument is consummated, by the con- 
viction of the delighted hearer. 

The success of this gentleman has rendered it 
doubtful with several literary characters in this 
country, whether a high fancy be of real use or 
advantage to any one but a poet. They contend, 
that although the most beautiful flights of the 
happiest fancy, interspersed through an argu- 
ment, may give an audience the momentary de- 
lightful swell of admiration, the transient thrill of 
divinest rapture ; yet, that they produce no last- 
ing eftect in forAvarding the purpose of the speak- 
er : on the contrary, that they break the unity 
and disperse the force of an argument, which, 
otherwise, advancing in close array, like the 
plii\lanx of Sparta, would cany every thing be- 
fore it. They give an instance in the celebrated 
Curran ; and pretend that his fine fancy, although 
it fires, dissolves and even transports liis audience 
to a momeutary frenzy, is a real and a fatal misr 



100 THE BRITISH SPY. 

fortune to his clients ; as it calls off the attentiou 
of the jurors from the intriusick and essential me- 
rits of the defence ; eclipses the justice of the 
client's cause, iu the blaze of the advocate's 
talents ; induces a suspicion of the guilt which re- 
quires such a glorious display of refulgence to di- 
vert the inquiiy ; and substitutes a fruitless short- 
lived ecstacy, in the place of permanent and sub- 
stantial conviction. Hence, they say, that the 
client of Mr. Curran is, invariably, the victim of 
the prosecution, which that able and eloquent 
advocate is employed to resist. 

The doctrine, in the abstract, may be true, or, 
as doctor Doubty says, it may not be true ; for the 
present, I Avill not trouble you with the expres- 
sion of my opinion. I fear, however, my dear 

S , that Mr. Curran's failures may be 

traced to a cause very different from any fault 
either in the style or execution of liis enchanting 

defences : a cause but I am forgetting 

tliat this letter has yet to cross the Atlantic* 

* Tlie sentiment, which is suppressed, seems to wear the 
li'.ei-v of Bedibid, IMoira, and the prince of Wales* 



THE BRITISH SPY. 1 r 

To return to tlie of the Uni- 
ted States. His political adversaries allege that he 
is a mere lawyer ; that his mind has been so long 
trammelled by judicial precedent, so long habitu- 
ated to the quart and tierce of forensick digladiii- 
tion, (as doctor Johnson would probably liave 
called it,) as to be unequal to the discussion of a 
great question of state. Mr. Curran, in his de- 
fence of Rowan, seems to have sanctioned the 
probability of such an effect from such a cause, 
when he complains -of his own mind as having 
been narrowed and circumscribed, by a strict and 
technical adherence to established forms; but in 
the next brcatli, an astonishing burst of the grand- 
est thought, and a power of comprehension to 
which there seems to be no earthly limit, proves 
that his complaint, as it relates to himself, is in- 
tirely without foundation. 

Indeed, if the o])jection to the 

mean any thing more than that he has not had 
tlie same illumination and exercise in matters of 
state as if he had devoted his life to tliem, I am 
unwilling- to admit it. The force of a cannon is 



102 THE BRITISH SPY. 

the same, -whetKer pointed at a rampart or a man 
of war, h1 though practice may have made the en- 
gineer more expert in the one case tlian in the 
other. So it is clear, that practice may give a 
man a greater command over one class of sub- 
jects than another ; but the inherent energy of 
his mind remains the same, Avluthersoeverit may 
be directed. From this impression I have never 
seen any cause to wonder at what is called a uni- 
versal genius : it proves only that the man has 
applied a powerful mind to the consideration of a 
great variet) of subjects, and pays a compliment 
lather to his superiour industry, than his supex'iour 
intellect. I am very certain that the gentleman, 
of wliom we are speaking, possesses the acumen 
which might constitute him a universal genius, 
according to the usual acceptation of the phrase. 
But if he be the truant, which his warmest friends 
represent iiim to be, thei-e is very little proba- 
Ijility that he will ever reach this distinction. 

Think you, my dear S , that the two 

gentlemen, whom I have attempted to portray 
toyou, were, according to the notion of Helvetius^- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 163 

born with equal minds ; and that accident or edu- 
cation has produced the striking difference which, 
we perceive to exist between them ? I wish it 

were the case ; and that the » 

would be pleased to reveal to us, by what acw- 
dent, or what system of education, he has ac- 
quired his peculiar sagacity and promptitude; 
Until this shall be done, I fear I must consider 
the hypothesis of Helvetius as a splendid and 
flattering dream. 

But I tire you :— adieu, for the present, friend 
and guardian of ray youth. 



LETTER yi. 

Jainesto^vn, September 27. 
.1 HAVE taken a pleasant ride of sixty miles 

down the river, in order, my deai- S , to 

see the remains of the first English settlement in 
V^irginia. 

The site is a veiy handsome one. The inver iS 
three miles broad ; and, on the opposite shore, 
the country presents a fine range of bold and 
beautiful hills. But I find no vestiges of the an- 
dent town, except the ruins of a church steeple, 
And a disordered group of old tombstones. On 
one of these, shaded by the boughs of a tree, 
whose trunk has embraced and grown over the 
edge of the stone, and seated on the head-stone 
of another gi-ave, I now address you. 

What a moment for a lugubrious meditation 
Among the tombs ! but fear not ; I have neither 
the temper nor the genius of a Hervey : and, as 
much as I revere his pious memory, I cannot en- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 105^ 

vy him the possession of such a genius and sueh a 
temper. For my own part, I w ould not have suf- 
fered the mournful pleasure of writing his book, 
and doctor Young's Night Thoughts, for all the 
just fame which they have both gained by those 
celebrated productions. Much rather would I 
have danced, and sung, and played the fiddle 
with Yorick, through the whimsical pages of 
Tristram Shandy : that book which eveiy body 
justly censures and admires alternately ; and which 
w ill continue to be read, abused and devoured, 
\\ ith ever fresh delight, as long as the world shall 
relish a joyous laugh, or a tear of the most deU- 
cious feeling. 

By the by, here, on one side is an inscriptiou 
on a gravestone, which would constitute no bad 
theme for an occasional meditation from Yorick 
himself. The stone, it seems, covers the grave of 
a man who was born in the neighbourhood of 
London ; and Iiis epitaph concludes tlie short and 
rudely executed account of his biith and deatb^ 

y declaring him to have been " a great sinner, 

'* in hopes of a joyful resurrection ;" as if he had 

5* 



106 THE BRITISH SPY. 

sinned, with no other intention, than to give him- 
self a fair title to these exulting liopes. But awk- 
wardly and ludicrously as the sentiment is ex- 
pressed, it is in its meaning most just and heauti- 
ful ; as it acknowledges the boundless mercy of 
Heaven, and glances at that divinely consoling 
proclamation, " come unto me, all ye, who are 
** weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you 
<'rest." 

The ruin of the steeple is about thirty feet 
Ixigh, and mantled, to its very summit, Avith ivy. 
It is difficult to look at this venerable object, sur- 
rounded as it is with these awful proofs of the 
mortality of man, witliout exclaiming in the pa- 
thetick solemnity of our Shakspeare, 

** The cloudcapt towers, the govgeous palaces, 
" The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
** Yea, all which it inhnit, shall dissolve ; 
" And, like this insubstaiuial pageant faded, 
" Leave not a wreck behind," 

Whence, my dear S , arises the irre- 
pressible reverence and tender affection with 
which I look at this broken steeple ? Is it, that 



THE BRITISH SPY. 107 

Bfty soul, by a secret, subtile process, invests the 
mouldering ruin with her own powers ; imagines 
it a fellow being ; a venerable old man , a Nestor, 
or an Ossian, who lias witnessed and survived the 
ravages of successive generations, the companions 
of his youth, and of his maturity, and now mounis 
his own solitary and desolate condition, and hails 
their spirits in every passing cloud ? Whatever 
may be the cause, as I look at it, I feel my soul 
drawn forward, as by the cords of gentlest sym- 
pathy, and involuntarily open ray lips to offer con- 
solation to the drooping pile. 

Who'e, my S , is the busy, bustling 

croAvd which landed here two hundred years ago ? 
Where is Smith, that pink of gallantry, that 
flower of chivalry ? I fancy that I can see their 
flrft, slow and cautious approach to the shore ; 
theu' keen and vigil aiiU eyes, piercing the forest 
in eveiy direction, to detect the lurking Indian, 
with his tomahawk, bow and arrow. Good Hea- 
vens! what an entei'prisel how full of the most 
fearful perils ! and yet how intirely profitless to 
the daring men who personally undeitook and 



108 THE BRITISH SPY. 

achieved it ! Tiirough what a series of the most 
S{jint-chilling hardships, had they to toil ! How 
often did they cast theh- eyes to England in vain ! 
and with what delusive hopes, day after day, did 
tlie little, famished crew strain their sight to 
catch the white sail of comfort and relief! But 
day after day, the sun set, and darkness covered 
the earth ; but no sail of comfort or relief came. 
How often in the pangs of hunger, sickness, soli- 
tude and disconsolation, did they think of Lon- 
don ; her shops, her markets groaning under the 
weiglit ot plenty ; her streets swarming with gild- 
ed coaches, bustling hacks, with crowds of lords, 
dukes and commons, with healthy, busy content- 
e<l faces of every description ; and among them 
none more healthy or more contented, than those 
of their ungrateful and improvident directors! 
But now — whei'e aretliey, all ? the little, famished 
colony which landed here, and the many-coloured 
crowd of London, — where are they, my dear 

S ? Gone, wliere thei'e is no distinction ; 

consigned to the common earth. Another ge- 
nci-ation succeeded them: A\l)i(h, just as busy 



THE BRITISH SPY. 109 

and as bustling as that which fell before it, has 
sunk down into the same nothingness. Another, 
and yet another billow has rolled on, each emu- 
lating its predecessor in height ; towering, for its 
moment, and curling its foaming honours to the 
clouds; then roai'ing, breaking, and perishing oa 
the same shoi'e. 

Is it not strange, that, familiarly and univer- 
sally as these things are known, yet each genera- 
tion is as eager in the pursuit of its earthly ob- 
jects, projects its plans on a scale as extensive, 
and labours in their execution with a spirit as ar- 
dent and unrelaxing, as if this life and this world 
were to last for ever ? It is indeed, a most bene- 
volent interposition of Providence, that these 
palpable and just views of the vanity of human 
life are not permitted intirely to ci-ush the spirits, 
and unnerve the arm of industry. But at the same 
time, methinks, it Avould be wise in man to per- 
mit them to have, at least, so much weight with 
him, as to prevent his total absorption by the 
things of this earth, and to point some of his 



110 THE BRITISH SPY. 

tliouglits and his exertions, to a system of being, 
far more permanent, exalted and happy. Think 
not this reflection too solemn. It is irresistibly 
inspired by the objects around me ; and, as rarely 
as it occurs, (much too rarely) it is most certain- 
ly and solemnly true, my S 

It is curious to reflect, what a nation, in the 
course of two hundred years, has sprung up and 
flourished from the feeble, sickly germ which 
was planted here! Little did our shortsighted 
court suspect the conflict which she was prepar- 
ing foi' herself; the convulsive throe by which her 
infant colony would in a few years burst from 
her, and start into a political importance that 
would astonish the earth. 

But Virginia, my dear S , as rapidly 

as her population and her wealth must contuiue 
to advance, wants one most important source 
of so iid grandeur; and that, too, the animating 
soul of a I'epublick. I mean, publick spirit ; that 
sacred amorpatricc which filled Greece and Rome 
^^'^th patriots, heroes and scholars. 



THE BRITISH SPY. Ill 

There seems tome to be but one object through- 
out the state ; to grmv rich: a passion which is visi- 
ble, not only in the walks of private life, but which 
lias crept into -and poisoned every pubhck body iu 
tlie state. Indeed, from the very genius of the 
government, by which all the publick chai'acters 
are, at short periodical elections, evolved from 
the body of the people, it cannot but happen, 
that the councils of the state must take the im- 
pulse of the private pi'opensitics of the country. 
Hence, Virginia exhibits no great publick ivnprove- 
ments ; hence, in spite of her wealth, every part 
of the country manifests her sufferings, cither 
from the penury of her guardians, or their want 
of that attention, and noble pride, wherewith it is 
their duty to consult her appearai>ce. Her roads 
and highways are frequently impassable, some- 
times frightful ; the very few publick works which 
have been set on foot, instead of being carried on 
with spirit, are permitted to languish and pine, 
sud creep feebly along, in such a manner, tliat 
the fast part of an edifice grows gray v/ith age, 



112 THE BUITISH SPY. 

and almost tumbles in ruins, before the last part 
is lifted from the dust ; her highest officers are 
sustained with so avaricious, so niggardly a hand, 
that if they are not driven to subsist on roots, and 
drink ditch-water, with old Fabricius, it is not for 
the want of republican economy in the projectors 
of the salaries; and, above all, the general culture 
of the human mind, that best cure for the aristo- 
crat! ck distinctions which they profess to hate, that 
best basis of the social and political equality, which 
they profess to love : this culture, instead of be- 
coming a national care, is intrusted merely to 
such individuals, as hazard, indigence, misfor- 
tunes or crimes, have forced from their native 
Europe, to seek an asylum and bread in the wilds 
of America. 

They have only one publick seminary of learn- 
ing : a college in Williamsburg, about seven miles 
from this place ; which was erected in the reign of 
our William and Mary ; derives its principal sup- 
port from their munificence ; and therefore very 
properly bears tlieir names. Tliis college, in thp 



THE BRITISH SPY. II3 

fastidious folly and affectation of republicanism., 
©r what is worse, in the niggardly spirit of par- 
simony, which they dignify with the name of 
economy, these democrats have endowed with a 
few despicable fi'agments of surveyor's fees, &e. 
thus converting their national academy into a 
mere lazaretto^ and feeding its polite, scientifick 
and highly respectable professors, like a band 
of beggars, on the scraps and crumbs that fall 
from the financial table. And, then, instead of 
aiding and energizing the police of the college, 
by a few civil regulations, they permit their youth 
to run riot, in all the wildness of dissipation ; 
while the venerable professors are forced to look 
on, in the deep mortification of conscious impo- 
tence, and see their care and zeal requited, by 
the ruin of their pupils and the destruction of 
the seminary. 

These are points, which, at present, I can 
barely touch; when I have an easier seat and 
writing desk, than a grave and a tombstone, it 
will give me pleasure to dilate on them ; for, it 



114 THE BRITISH SPY. 

M ill afford an opportunity of exulting in the supe- 
riority of our own energetick monarchy, over this 
republican body without a soul.* 

For the present, my dear S , I bid yoti 

adieu. 

* British insolence ! Yet it cannot be denied, howerer 
jjainful tlie admission, that there is some foundation for hb 
ecHsures. 



LETTER VU. 

Richmond. October IQ. 

J. HAVE been, mj'- dear S , on an ex- 
cursion through the counties which lie along the 
eastei-n side of the Blue Ridge. A general de- 
scription of that country and its inhabitants may 
form the subject of a future letter. For the pre- 
sent, 1 must entertain you with an account of a 
most singular and interesting adventure, -whicli I 
met with, in the course of the tour. 

It Avas one Sunday, as I travelled through the 
county of Orange, that my eye was caught by a 
cluster of horses tied near a i*uinous, old, wooden 
house, in the forest, not far from the road side. 
Having frequently seen such objects before, in 
travelling through these states, I had no difficulty 
in understanding that this was a place of religious 
worship. 

DeA^otion alone should have stopped me, to 
join in the duties of the congregation; but I must 



116 THE BRITISH SPY. 

confess, tliat curiosity, to hear the preacher o£ 
sucli a wiklerness, was not the least of my mo- 
tives. On entering, I was struck with his pretei'- 
natural appearance. He was a tall and very spare 
©Id iTian; his head, which Avas covered with a 
white linen cap, his shrivelled hands, and his 
voice, were all shaking under the influence of a 
palsy ; and a few moments ascertained to njie that 
he was perfectly Wind. 

The first emotions which touched my breast, 
were those of mingled pity and veneration. But 
ah ! sacred God ! how soon were all ray feelings 
changed ! The lips of Plato were never more 
worthy of a prognostiek swarm of bees, than were 
the lips of this holy man ! It was a day of the ad- 
ministration of the sacrament; and his subject, of 
course, was the passion of our Saviour. I had 
heai'd the subject handled a thousand times : I 
had thought it exhausted long ago. Little did I 
suppose, that in the wild woods of America, I was 
to meet with a man whose eloquence would give 
to this topick a new and more sublime pathos, than 
I had ever befoi'e witnessed. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 117 

As he descended from the pulpit, to distribute 
the mystick symbols, there was a peculiar, a more 
than human solemnity in his air and manner, 
which made my blood run cold, and ray whole 
frame shiver. 

He then drew a picture of the sufferings of our 
Saviour; his trial before Pilate ; his ascent up Cal- 
vary ; his crucifixion ; and his death. I knew the 
whole histoiy ; but never, until then, had I heard 
the circumstances so selected, so arranged, so 
coloured ! It was all new : and I seemed to have 
heard it for the first tinae in my Ufe. His enunci- 
ation was so deliberate, that his voice trembled on 
every syllable ; and every heart in the asseml)ly 
ti-embled in unison. His peculiar phrases had 
that force of description, that the original scene 
appeared to be, at that moment, acting before ouv 
eyes. We saw the very faces of the Jews : the 
staring, frightful distortions of malice and rage. 
We saw the buffet : my soul kindled with a flame 
of indignation; and my liandswere involuntarily 
and convulsively clinched. 

But when he came to touch on the patience, the 



118 THE BRITISH SPY. 

forgiving meekness of our Savioui- ; when he drew, 
to the life, his blessed eyes streaming- in tears to 
heaven ; his voice breathing to God, a soft and 
gentle prayer of pardon on his enemies, " P'ather 
" forgive them, for they know not what they do" 
— the voice of the preacher, which had all along 
faltered, grew fainter and fainter, until his utter- 
ance being intirely obstructed by the force of hisr 
feelings, he raised his handkerchief to his eyes, 
and burst into a loud and irrepressible flood of 
grief Tlie effect is inconceivable. The whole 
house resounded with the mingled groans, and 
sobs, and shrieks of the congregation. 

It was some time before the tumult had sub- 
sided, so far as to permit him to proceed. Indeed, 
judging by the usuai, but fallacious standard of 
jTiy own weakness, 1 began to be veiy uneasy for 
the situation of the preacher. For I could not 
conceive, how he would be able to let his audi- 
ence down from the height to which he had 
Avound tliem, without impairing the solemnity^ 
and dignity of his subject, or perhaps shocking 
them by the abruptness of the fall. But— no: the 



THE BRITISH SPY. 119 

descent was as beautiful and sublime, as the ele- 
vation had been rapid and enthusiastick. 

The first sentence, with which he broke the 
awful silence, was a quotation from Rousseau; 
"Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus 
"Christ, like a God!" 

I despair of giving you any idea of the effect 
produced by this short sentence, unless you could 
perfectly conceive the whole manner of the man, 
as well as the peculiar crisis in the discoui-se. 
Never before, did I completely understand what 
Demosthenes meant by laying such stress on de' 
livery. You are to bring before you the venerable 
figure of the preacher : his blindness, constantly 
recalling to your recollection old Homer, Ossiaa 
and Milton, and associating with his perform- 
ance, the melancholy grandeur of their geniuses ; 
you are to imagine that you hear his slow, so- 
lemn, well-accented enunciation, and his voice of 
affecting, trembling melody ; you are to remember 
the pitch of passion and enthusiasm to which the 
congregation were raised ; and then, the few mi- 
nutes of portentous, deathlike silence wliich reign- 



120 THE BRITISH SPY. 

ed throughout the house : the preacher I'emoving 
his white handkerchief from his aged face, (even 
yet wet from the recent torrent of his tears) and 
slowly stretching forth the palsied hand which 
liolds it, begins the sentence : " Socrates died 
**Iike a philosopher" — then pausing, raising his 
other hand, pressing them both, clasped together, 
with warmth and energy to his breast, lifting his 
*' sightless balls" to heaven, and pouring his whole 
soul into his tremulous voice — "but Jesus Christ 
"—like a God !" If he had been indeed and ia 
truth an angel of light, the eiFect could scarcely 
have been more divine. 

Whatever I had been able to conceive of the 
sublimity of Massillon, or the force of Bourdaloue, 
had fallen far short of the power which I felt from 
the delivery of this simple sentence. The bloody 
which just before had rushed in a hurricane up- 
on my brain, and, in the violence and agony of 
my feelings, had held my whole system in sus- 
pense, now I'an back into my heart, with a sen- 
sation which I cannot desci'ibe : a kind of shud- 
dering delicious horrour ! The paroxysm of blend- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 121 

ccl pity and indignation, to which I had been 
transported, subsided into the deepest self-abase- 
ment, humility and adoration. I had just been la- 
cerated and dissolved by sympathy, for our Sa- 
viour as a fellow creature ; but now, with fear and 
trembling, I adoi'ed him as — "a God !" 

If this description give you the impression, 
that this incomparable minister had any thing of 
shallow, theatrical trick in his manner, it does 
him great injustice. I liave never seen, in any 
other orator, such an union of simplicity and ma- 
jesty. He has not a gesture, an attitude, or an ac- 
cent, to which he does not seem forced, by the 
sentiment wliich he is expressing. His mind is too 
serious, too earnest, too solicitous, and, at the 
same time, too dignified, to stoop to artifice. Al- 
though as far removed from ostentation as a man, 
can be, yet it is clear from the train, the style 
and substance of his thoughts, that he is, not only 
a very polite scholar, but a man of extensive and 
profound erudition. I was foj-cibly struck with a 
short, yel beautiful character which he drew of 

our learned and amiable countryman, sir Robert 
6 



122 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Boyle: he spoke of him, as if "his noble mind 
"had, even before death, divested herself of all 
« influence from his frail tabernacle of flesh ;" 
and called him, in his peculiarly emphatick and im- 
pressive manner, "a pure intelligence : the Unk 
** between men and angels." 

This man has been before my imagination al- 
most ever since. A thousand times, as I rode 
along, I dropped the reins of my bridle, stretched 
forth my hand, and tried to imitate his quotation 
from Rousseau : a thousand times I abandoned the 
attempt in despaii', and felt persuaded that his 
peculiar manner and power arose from an energy 
of soul, which nature could give, but v.hich no 
Jiuman being could justly copy. In short, he 
fteeras to be altogether a being of a former age, 
or of a totally different nature from the rest of 
Inen. As I recal, at this moment, several of his 
awfully striking attitudes, the chilling tide, with 
which my blood begins to pour along my arteries, 
reminds me of the emotions produced by the first 
sight of Gray's introductory picture of Iiis bai^d. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 123 

"On a I'ock, whose haughty brow, 

" Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood, 
*' Robed in the sable garb of wo, 

" With haggard eyes the poet stood ; 
'* (Loose liis beard and hoary hair 

*' Streamed, hke a iseteor, to the troubled air :) 
"And with a poet's hand and proi)het's fire, 

* Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre." 

Guess my surprise, when, on my arrival at 
Richmond, and mentioning the name of this man, 
I found not one person who had ever before heard 
of James Waddell.' Is it not strange, that such a 
genfas as this, so accomplished a scliolar, so di- 
vine an orator, should be permitted to languish 
and die in obscurity, within eighty miles of the 
metropolis of Virginia ? To me it is a conclusive 
argument, either that the Virgitiians have no 
taste for the highest strains of the most sublime 
oratory, or that they are destitute of a much more 
important quality, the love of genuine and exalted 
religion. 

Indeed, it is too clear, my friend, that this soil 
abounds more in weeds of foreign birth, tban in 
good and salubrious fruits. Among otliers, the 



124 THE BRITISH SPY. 

noxious weed of infidelity has struck a deep, a 
fatal root, and spread its pestilential branches 
far around. ] fear that our eccentrick and fanciful 
countryman, Godwin, has contributed not a little 
to water and cherish this per' icious exotick. There 
is a novelty, a splendour, a boldness in his scheme 
of morals, peculiarly fitted to captivate a youtliful 
and an ardent mind. A young man feels his deli- 
cacy flattered, in the idea of being emancipated 
from the old, obsolete and vulgar motives of mo- 
ral conduct ; and acting correctly from motives 
quite new, refined and sublimated in the crucible 
of pure, abstracted reason. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, in this attempt to change the motives of his 
conduct, he loses the old ones, while the new, 
either from being too ethereal and sublkne, or 
from some other want of congeniality, i-efuse to 
mix and lay hold of the gross materials of his na- 
ture. Thus he becomes emancipated indeed; dis- 
charged not only from ancient and vulg u' shackles; 
but also, from the modern, finespun, tinselled re- 
straints of his divine Godwin. Having imbibed 
the high spirit of Uterary adventure, he disdains 



THE BRITISH SPY. 125 

tlie limits of the moral world; and advancing 
boldly to the throne of God, he questions him on 
his dispensations, and demands the reasons of his 
laws. But the counsels of heaven ai'e above the 
ken, not contrary to the voice, of human reason; 
and the unfortunate youth, unable to reach and 
measure them, recoils from the attempt, with 
melancholy rashness, into hifidehty and deism. 
Godwin's glittering theories are on his lips. 
Utopia or Mezorania boast not of a purer moral- 
ist, in toords, than the young Godwinian ; but 
the unbridled licentiousness of his conduct makes 
it manifest, that if Godwin's principles be true 
in the abstract, they are not fit for this system of 
things; whatever they might be in the republick 
of Plato. 

From a life of inglorious indolence, by far too 
prevalent among the young men of this countiy, 
the transition is easy and natural to immorality 
and dissipation. It is at this giddy period of life, 
when a series of dissolute courses have debauched 
the purity and innocence of the heart, shaken 
the pillars of the understanding, and converted 
her sound and wholesome operations into little 



126 THE BRITISH SPY. ' 

moi'e than a set of tevensh starts, and incoheretxt^ 
wid delirious dreams ; it is in such a situation that 
a newfangled theory is welcomed as an amusing 
guest, and deism is embraced as a balmy com- 
forter against the pangs of an offended conscience. 
Th's coalition, once formed and habitually con- 
solidated, " farewell, a long farewell" to honour, 
genius and glory ! From such a gulf of com- 
plicated ruin, few have the energj" even to at- 
tempt an escape. The moment of cool reflection, 
which should save them, is too big with horrour to 
be endured. Every plunge is deeper and deeper, 
until the tragedy is finally wound up by a pistol 
or a halter. Do not believe that T am drawing 
from fancy : the picture is unfortunately ti-ue. 
Few dramas, indeed, have yet reached their ca- 
tastrophe ; but, too many are in a rapid progress 
towards it. 

These thoughts are affecting and oppressive. I 
am glad to retreat from them, by bidding you 
adieu ; and offering my prayers to heaven, that 
you may never lose the pure, the genial consola- 
tions of unshaken faith, and an approving con- 
science. Once more, my dear S , adieu. 



LETTER Vm. 

Richmond, October 15. 

itiRN of talents in this country, my dear 
S , have been generally bred to the pro- 
fession of the law : and, indeed, throughout the 
United States, I have met with few persons of 
exalted intellect, whose powers have been direct- 
ed to any other pursuit. The l>ar, in Ameiica, is 
the road to honour ; and hence, although the pro- 
fession is graced by the most shining geniuses on 
the continent, it is incumbered also by a melan- 
clioly group of young men, who hang on the rear 
of the bar, like Goethe's sable clouds in the wes- 
tern horizon. I have been told that the bar of 
I'irginia was, a few years ago, pronounced by the 
supreme court of the United States, to be the 
most enlightened and able on the continent. I am 
ver}' incompetent to decide on the merit of their 
legal acquirements; but, putting aside the par- 
tiality of a Briton, I do not think either of the 



128 THE BRITISH SPY. 

gentlemen by any means so eloquent or so eru- 
dite as oui' countryman Erskine. With your per- 
mission, however, I will make you better ac- 
quainted with the few characters who lead the 
van of the profession. 

Mr has great personal advantages. 

A figure large and portly; his features uncom- 
monly fine ; his dark eyes and his whole counte- 
nance lighted up with an expression of the most 
conciliating sensibility ; his attitudes dignified and 
commanding; his gesture easy and graceful ; his 
voice perfect harmony ; and liis whole manner 
that of an accomplished and engaging gentleman. 
I have reason to believe that the expression of his 
countenance does no more than justice to his 
heart. If I be correctly informed, his feelings are 
exquisite ; and the proofs of his benevolence are 
various and clear beyond the possibility of doubt. 
He has filled the highest offices in this common- 
wealth, and has very long maintained a most re- 
spectable rank in his profession. His character, 
with the people, is that of a great lawyer and an 
eloquent speaker ; and, indeed, so many men of 



THE BRITISH SPY. ^129 

dtscernment and taste entertain this opinion, and 
my prepossessions in his favour are so strong, oa 
account of the amiable qualities of his character, 
tliat I am very well disposed to doubt the accu- 
racy of my own judgment as it relates to him. 

To me, however, it seems, that his mind, as is 
often but not invariably the case, corresponds 
with his personal appearance : that is, that it is 
turned rather for ornament than for severe use : 
pompdSy qiiam pugnx aptior, as I'uUy expresses 
it. His speeches, I tliink, deserve the censure 
which lord Verulam pronounces on the writers 
posterior to the reformation of the church. " Lu- 
**ther," says he, "standing alone, against tfie 
"church of Home, found it necessary to awake 
"all antiquity in his behalf: this introduced the 
"study of the dead languages, a taste for the ful- 
lness of the Ciceronean manner; and hence the 
"still prevalent errour of hunting more after 
** words than matter; and more after the choice- 
**iiess of the phrase and the round and ch-an 
*' composition of the sentence, and the sweet fall- 
"ings of the clauses, and the varying and illus- 



130 THE BRITISH SPY. 

**tration of their -works with tropes and figures, 
**than after the weight of matter, Avorth of sub- 
"ject, soundness of argument, life ot invention, 
*'or depth of judgment." 

Mr 's temper and habits lead him 

to the swelling, stately manner of Bolingbroke ; 
but either from the want of promptitude and 
richness of conception, or his too sedulous con- 
cern and " hunting after words," he does not 
maintain that manner, smoothly and happily. Oa 
the contrary, the spirits of his hearers, after 
having been awakened and put into sweet and 
pleasant motion, have their tide, not unfrequent- 
ly checked, ruffled and painfully obstructed by 
the hesitation and perplexity of the speaker. It 

certainly must demand, my dear S , a 

mind of very high powers to sujiport the swell of 
Bolingbroke, with felicity. The tones of voice, 
which naturally belong to it, keep the expecta- 
tion continually *'on tiptoe," and this must be 
gi'atified not only by the most oily fluency, but 
by a course of argument clear as light, and an al- 
ternate play of imagination as grand and magoi- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 131 

ficent as Herschell's dance of the sidereal system. 
The work requii-es to be perpetually urged for- 
ward. One interruption in the current of the 
language, one poor thought or abortion of fancy, 
one vacant aversion of the eye or relaxation in 
the expression of face, intirely breaks and dis- 
solves the whole charm. The speaker, indeed, 
may go on and evolve, here and there, a pretty 
thought; but the wondrous magick of the whole is 
gone for ever. 

Whether it be from any defect in the organi- 
zation of Mr, 's mind, or that his pas- 
sion for the fine dress of his thoughts is the mas- 
ter passion, which, *' like Aaron's serpent swal- 
"lows up the rest," I will not undertake to de- 
cide ; but perhaps it results from one of those two 
causes, that all the arguments, which I have ever 
heard from him, are defective in that important 
and most material character, the lucidus orth. 

I have been sometimes inclined to believe, that 
a man's division of his argument would be gene- 
rally found to contain a secret history of the dif- 
ficulties which he himself has encountered in the 



132 THE BRITISH SPY. 

investigation of liis subject. I am firmly persuaded 
tliat the extreme prolixity of many discoui"ses, to 
\\ hich we are doomed to listen, is chargeable, 
not to the fertility, but to the darkness and im- 
potence of the brain which produces them. A 
man, wlio sees liis object in a strong light, marches 
directly up to it, in a right line, with the firm 
step of a soldier ; while another, residing in a less^- 
illumined zone, wanders and reels in the twilight 
of the brain, and ei'e he attain his object, treads 
a maze as intricate and perplexing as that of the 
cT^lebrated labyrinth of Crete. 

It was remarkable of the of 

the United States, whom I mentioned to you in 
a former letter as looking through a subject at a 
single glance, that he almost invai-iably seized 
one strong point only, the pivot of the contro- 
versy : this point he would i?)force with till his 
powers, never permitting his own mind to waver 
nor obscuiiiig tliose of his hearers, by a cloud of 
inforiour, unimportant considerations. But this is 

not the manner of Air I suspect, that 

in the prepai-uloiy investigation of a subject, he 



THE BRITISH SPY. 133 

gains his ground by slow and laborious grada- 
tions ; and tbat his difficulties are numerous and 
embarrassing. Hence it is, perhaps, that his 
points are generally too multifarious; and al- 
though, among tlie rest, he exhibits the strong 
point, its appearance is too often like that of Is- 
sacliar, *' bow'd down between two burthens." I 
take this to be a veiy ill-judged method. It may 
serve indeed, to make the multitude stare ; but it 
frustrates the great purpose of the speaker. In- 
stead of giving a simple, lucid and animated view 
of a subject, it overloads, confounds and fatigues 
the listener. Instead of leaving hira under the 
\avacity of clear and full conviction, it leaves him 
hewildered, darkling, asleep ; and when he awakes, 
he 

....«.." wakes, emerg^iiig from a sea of dream 
" Tumultuous; where his wreck'd ilespoiiding thought, 
" From wave to wave of wild uncertainty 
" At random drove, her hehn of reason lost." 

I incline to believe that if there be a blemish 
in die mind of tliis amiable gentleman, it is the 
■want of a strong and masculine judgment. If such 



134 THE BRITISH SPY. 

an agent had wielded the sceptre of his under- 
standing, it is presumable, that ere this, it would 
have chastised his exuberant fondness for literary 
finery, and the too ostentatious and unfortunate 
parade of points in his argument, on which I have 
just commented. Ifl may confide in the replies 
which I have heard given to him at the bar, this 
want of judgment is sometimes manifested in his 
selection and application of law cases. But of this 
I can judge only from the triumphant air with 
which his adversai'ies seize his cases and appear 
to turn them against him. 

He is certainly a man of close and elaborate 
research. It would seem to me, however, my 

dear S , that in order to constitute a 

seientifick lawyer, something more is necessaiy 
than the patient and persevering revolution of 
the leaves of an author. Does it not require a dis- 
cernment sufficienty clear and strong to evis- 
cerate the principles of each case; a judgment 
potent enough to digest, connect and systema- 
tize them, and to distinguish, at once, in any fu- 
ture combination of circumstances, the very fea- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 135 

tare which gives or refuses to a principle, a just 
application ? Witliout such intellectual properties, 
I should conjecture (for on this subject, I can 
only conjecture) that a man could not have the 
fair advantage and perfect command of his read- 
ing. For, in the first place, I should apprehend, 
th.;t he would never discover the application of a 
case, without the recm'rence of all the same cu'- 
eumstances; in the next place, that his cases 
would form a perfect chaos, a riicUs indigestaqne 
7noles, in his brain; and lastly, that he would 
often and sometimes perhaps fatally mistake the 
identifying feature, and furnish his antagonist 
•with a formidable weapon against himself. 

But let me fly from this intangled wilderness, 
of which I have so little knowledge, and return 

to Mr Although when brought to 

the standard of perfect oratory, he may be sub- 
ject to the censures which I have passed on him ; 
yet it is to be acknowledged, and I make the ac- 
knowledgment with pleasure, that he is a man of 
extensive reading, a well informed lawyer, a fine 
belles lettres scholar, and sometimes a beautiful 
speaker. 



136 THE BRITISH SPY. 

The gentleman who has been pohited out to 
me as holding the next if not an equal grade ia 

the profession is Mr He is, I am told, 

upwards of forty ,yeai'S of age ; but his look, I 
think, is more juvenile. As to stature, he is about 
the ordinary height of men ; his foi-ra genteel, his 
person agile. He is distinguished by a quickness 
of look, a sprightly step, and that peculiarly jaun- 
ty air, which I have heretofore mentioned, as 
cl'.aracterizing the people of New-York. It is aa 
ail', liowever, which (perhaps, because I am a 
plain son of John Bnl!) is not entirely to my 
taste. Striking, indeed, it is ; highly genteel, and 
calculated for eclat; but then, I fear, that it may 
be censured as being too artificial; as having, 
therefore, too little appearance of eoniie.xioa 
•with the heart ; too little of that amiable sirapli- 
eitv, that winning softness, that vital warmth, 
which I have felt in the manner of a certain friend 
of mine. This objection, however, is not meant 
to touch his heart. I do not mean to censure his 
sensibilitA^ or his virtues. The i-emark applies 
only to the mere extenour of his minner.s ; and 



THE BRITISH SPY. 137 

even the censure, which I have pronounced on 
that, is pui-ely the result of a different taste, wliich 
is, at least, as probably wi-ong as that of Mr. 



Indeed, my dear S , I have seen few 

eminent men in this or any other country, who 
have been able so far to repress the exu'ting pride 
of conscious talents, as to put on the beliaviour 
which is calculated to win the hearts of the peo- 
ple. I mean that behaviour, wliich steers between 
a lowspiritetl, ci-inging sycophancy and ostenta- 
tious condescension on the one hand, and a haugh- 
ty self importance and supei'cilious contempt of 
one's fellow creatures on the other; that beha- 
viour, in which, v/hile a man displays a just re- 
spect for his own feelings and character, he seems, 
nevertheless, to concentre himself with the dis- 
position and inclinations of the person to whom 
he speaks : in a word, that happy behaviour, in 
which versatility and candour, modesty and dignity, 
are sweetly and harmoniously attempered and 
blended. Any Englishman, but yourself, my 

S , would easily recognize the original 

from whicli tliis latter picture is drawn. 



138 THE BRITISH SPY. 

This leads me off from the character of Mr. 

, to remark a moral defect, which I have 

several times ohserved in this country. INIany 
Well meaning men, having heard much of the 
hollovv, ceremonious professions and hypocritical 
grimace of courts; disgusted with every thing 
V'hich savours of aristocratick or monarchick pa- 
rade ; and smitten Avith the love of republican sim- 
plicity and honesty; have fallen into aruggedness 
of deportment, a thousand times more proudj 
more intolerable and disgusting, than Shaks- 
peare's foppish lord, with his chin new reapt 
and pouncet box. They scorn to conceal their 
thoughts; and in the expression of them, con- 
found bluntness with honesty. Their opinions are 
all dogmas. It is perfectly immaterial to them 
what any one else may think. Naj', many of 
them seem to have forgotten, that others can 
think, or feel at all. In pursuit of the haggard 
phantom, of republicanism,* they dash on, like 



* This iihrase is saavcely excusable, even in a Bvitoa 
nml a lord. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 139 

sir Joseph Banks, giving chase to the emperoiu* (rf* 
Morocco, I'egardless of the sweet and tender 
blossoms of sensibility, which fall, and bleed, and 
die behind them. What an errour is this, my 

dear S ! 1 am fi'equently disposed to 

ask such men, "think you, that the stern and 
implacable Achilles was an honester man than 
tlie gentle, humane and considerate Hector ! Was 
the arrogant and imperious Alexander an honest- 
er man than theratek, compassionate and amia- 
ble Cyrus ? Was the proud, the rough, the surly 
Cato, more honest than the soft, polite and deli- 
cate ScJpio Africanus ? In short, are not honesty 
and humanity compatible ? And v.hat is the most 
genuine and captivating politeness, but humanity 
refined ?" 

But to return from this digression. Tlie quali- 
ties, by whicli Mr strikes the multi- 
tude, arc his ingenuity and his wit. But those, 
who look more closely into the anatomy of his 
mind, discover many properties of much higher 
dignity and importance. Tliis gentleman, in my 
Opinion, unites in himself a greater diversity of 



140 THE BRITISH SPY. 

talents and acquirements, than any other at the 
har of Virginia. He has the reputation, and I 
doubt not a just one, of possessing much legal 
science. He has an exquisite and a highly culti- 
vated taste for polite literature ; a genius quick 
and fertile ; a st}ie pure and classick ; a stream of 
perspicuous and beautiful elocution ; an ingenuity 
■which no difficulties can entangle or embarrass ; 
and a wit, whose vivid and brilliant coruscations, 
can gild and decorate the darkest subject. He 
chooses his ground, in the first instance, with 
great judgment ; and when, in the progress of a 
cause, an unexpected evolution of testimony, or 
intermediate decisions from the bench, have 
beaten that ground from under him, he possesses 
a happj', an astonishing versatility, by which he 
is enabled at once, to take a new position, without 
appearing to liave lost an atom, either in the 
measure or stability of his basis. This is a faculty 
wliich 1 have observed before in an inferiour de- 
gree ; but Mr is so adroit, so superiour 

in the execution of it, that in him it appears a 
new and peculiar talent: His statements, his nar- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 141 

rations, his arguments, are all as ti-ansparent as 
the light of day. He reasons logically, and de- 
claims very handsomely. It is true, he never 
brandishes the Olympick thunder of Homer, 
but then he seldom, if ever, sinks beneath the 
chaste and attractive majesty of \irgil. 

His fault is, that he has not veiled his ingenuity 
Tvith sufficient address. Hence, I am told, that he 
is considered as a Proteus; and the courts are 
disposed to doubt their senses, even when he ap- 
pears in his proper shape. But in spite of this 

adverse and unpropitious distrust, Mr 's 

popularity is still in its flood ; and he is justly- 
considered as an honour and an ornament to his 
profession. 

Adieu my friend, for the present. Ere long 
we may take another tour through this gallery 
of portraits, if more interesting objects do not 
call us off. Again, my S , good night. 



LETTER IX. 

Richmond, October 30. 

J. ALENTS, my dear S , wherever 

they have liad a suitable theatre, have never 
failed to emerge from obscurity and assume their 
proper rank in tiie estimation of the worhl. The 
celebrated Camden is said to have been the te- 
nant of a garret. Yet from the darkness, poverty 
and ignominy, of this residence, he advanced to 
distinction and wealth, and graced the first offices 
and titles of our island. It is impossible to turn 
over the British biograpliy, without bjing struck 
and charmed by the multitude of correspondent 
examples: a venerable group of novi homiies, as 
the lloraans calhd them : men, who, from the 
loM'est dejitlis of obscuiity and want, and without 
even the influence of a patron, have risen to the 
first honours of their country, and founded their 
o\x,\ fjimilies anew. In cvei-y nation, and in every 
age, great talents, thrown fairly into the point of 



THE BRITISH SPY. 143 

publick observation, Avill invariably produce the 
same ultimate effect. The jealous pride of poAver 
may attempt to repress and crush them ; the base 
and malignant rancour of impotent spleen and 
envy may strive to embarrass and retai-d their 
flight: but these efforts, so far from achieving 
their ignoble purpose, so far from producing a 
discernible obliquity in the ascent of genuine and 
vigorous talents, will serve only to increase their 
momentum and mark their transit with an addi- 
tional stream of glory. 

When the great earl of Chatham first made 
his appearance in our house of commons, and be- 
gan to astonish and transport the Bi-itish parlia-' 
ment, and the Biitisli nation, by the boldnesSj 
the force and range of his thoughts, and tlie ce- 
lestial fire and pathos of his eloquence, it is well 
known, that the minister Walpole, and his bro- 
ther Horace, (from motives very easily under- 
stood) exerted all their wit, all their oratory, all 
their acquirements of eveiy description, sustained 
and enforced by the unfeeling *' insolence of of- 
" fice," to heave a mountain on liis gigantick ge- 



144 THE BRITISH SPY. 

nius, and hide it from the world. Poor and power- 
less attempt !— The tables were turned. He rose 
upon them in the might and irresistible energy of 
his genius ; and in spite of all their convolutions, 
frantick agonies and spasms, he strangled them 
and their whole faction with as much ease as 
Hercules did the serpent ministers of jealousy, 
that were sent to assail his infant cradle. Who 
can turn over the debates of the day, and read 
the account of this conflict between youthful ar- 
dour and hoaryheaded cunning and power, with- 
out kindling in the cause of the tyro, and shout- 
ing at his victory ? That they should have at- 
tempted to pass off the grand, yet solid and judi- 
cious operations of a mind like his, as being mere 
thciiti ical start and emotion ; the giddy, hair- 
brained eccentricities of a romantick laoy ! That 
they should have had the presumjition to sup- 
pose tlieraselves capable of chaining down to the 
floor of the parliament, a genius so ethereal, 
towering, and sublime ! Why did they not, in the 
next breath, ])y way of crowning the climax of 
vanity, bid the magnificent fireball to descend 



THE BRITISH SPY. 145 

from its exalted and appropriate region, and per- 
form its splendid tour along the surface of the 
earth ?* 

When the son of this great man too, our pre- 
sent minister, and his compeer and rival, our 
friend, first commenced their political career, the 
publick papers teemed with strictures on their re- 
spective talents : the first was censured as being 
merely a dry and even a flimsy reasoiier ; the last 
was stigmatized as an empty declaimer. But er- 
rour and misrepresentation soon expire, and are 

* See a beautiful note in Darwin's Botanick Gar<1en, in 
■«v"nich the writer suggests the probability of three coitctu- 
trick strata of our atmosphere, in which, or between thtm, 
are proc'ucrtl four kiwds of meteors: in the lowcsi, the 
oomnioii lightning; in the next, shoothig stars; and the 
highest region, which he supposes to consist of inflaniinable 
gas tenfold lighter than the common atmosplierick nir, he 
makes the theatre of the northern light, and fireball or 
draco volans. He recites the histoid of one of the latter, 
seen in the year 175S, which was estimated to have bi.en a 
mile and an lialf in circumference ; to have been one hun- 
dred miles high ; and to have moved towards the north, 
thirty miles in a second. It h.d a i-eal toil, many miles 
long, which threw off sparks in its course ; and the whole 
exploded with a sound like that of distant thunder. Bot. 
Gai'den, part I. note 1. 



146 THE BRITISH SPY. 

• forgotten ; while truth rises upon their rvms, ami 
" flourishes in eternal youth." Thus, the false, 
the light, fugacious newspaper criticisms, which 
attemjjted to dissect and censure the arrangement 
of those gentlemen's talents, have been long since 
swept away by the besom of oblivion. They want* 
cd truth, that soul, which alone can secure im. 
mortaUty to any literary work. And Mr. Pitt and 
Mr. Fox have for many years been reciprocally 
snd alternately recognised, just as their subject 
demands it, either as close and cogent reasoners^ 
or as beautiful and superb rhetoricians. 

Talents, thei-efore, which are before the puB- 
llck, have nothing to dread, either from the jealous 
pride of pow er, or from the transient misrepre- 
sentations of party, spleen, or envy. In spite of 
opposition from any cause, the buoyant spirit 
will lift them to their proper grade : it wjould be 
unjust that it should lift them higher. 

It is true, there always are, and always will be, 
in every society, individuals, wliowill fancy them- 
selves examples of genius overlooked, underrated, 
or invidiously oppressed. But the misfortune of 



THE BRITISH SPY. 14^ 

such persons is imputable to their own vanity, 
and not to the publick opinion, which has weighed 
and graduated them. 

We remember many of our schoolmates, whose 
geniuses bloomed and died within the walls of 
Alma Mater; but whose bodies still live, the 
moving monuments of departed splendour, the 
animated and affecting remembrances of the ex- 
treme fragility of the human intellect. We re- 
member others, who have entered on publick life, 
\vith the most exulting promise ; have flown from 
the earth, like rockets; and, after a short and 
brilliant flight, have bursted with one or two ex- 
plosions—to blaze no more. Others, by a fewpre- 
mature scintillations of thought, have led them- 
selves and their partial friends to hope that they 
were fast advancing to a dawn of soft and beaute- 
ous light, and a meridian of bright and gorgeous 
effiilgence ; but their day has never yet broken, 
and never will it break. They are doomed for 
ever to that dim, crepuscular light, which sur- 
rounds the frozen poles, wlien the sun has re- 
treated to the opposite circle of the heavens. 



143 THE BRITISH SPY, 

Theirs is the etenial glimmering of the brain ; 
and their most luminous displays are the faint 
twinklings of the glow worm. We have seen others, 
wlio, at their start, gain a casual projectility, which 
raises them above their proper grade ; but by the 
just operation of their specifick gravity, they are 
made to subside again, and settle ultimately in the 
sphere to which they properly belong. 

All these characters, and many others who 
have had even slighter bases for their once san- 
guine, but now blasted hopes, foj'm a querulous 
and melanclmly band of moonstruck declaimers 
against the injustice of the world, the agency 
envy, the force of destiny, &c. charging their 
misfoTtune on every thing but the true cause: 
their own Avant of ivitnnsick, sterling merit : their 
want of that coprous, perennial spring of great 
and useful thought; without which a man may 
hope in vain for gi-owing reputation. Nor are 
they always satisfied with wailing their own des- 
tiny, pouring out the bitteiest imprecations of 
tlieir souls on the cruel stars which pi-esided at 
their birth, and asper^-ing the justice of the pub- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 149 

lick opinion v liicli has scaled them : too often in the 
contortions and pangs of disappointed ambition, 
they cast a scowling eye over tlie world of man; 
start back and blanch at the lustre of superiour 
merit ; and exert all the diabolical incantations of 
their black art, to conjure up an impervious va- 
poui', in order to sliroud its glories from the world. 
But it is all in vain. In spite of eveiy thing, the 
publick opinion will finally do justice to us all. 
The man who comes fairly before the world, 
and who possesses the great and vigorous stamina 
Avhich entitle him to a nich in the temple of glo- 
ry, has no reason to dread the ultimate result ; 
however slow his prOj^ress may be, he will in the 
end most indubitably receive that distinction* 
While the rest, " the swallows of science," the 
butterflies of genius, may flutter for their spring ; 
but they Avill soon pass away and be remembered 
no more. No enterprising man, therefore, (and' 
least of all, the truly great man) has reason to 
droop or i-epine at any efforts which he may sup- 
pose to be made with the view to depress him ; 
since he may rely on the universal and ujichanging 



150 THE BRITISH SPY. 

truth : that talents, which are before the worhl, 
vill most inevitably find their proper level ; and 
this is, certainly, all that a just man should de- 
sire. Let, then, tlie tempest of envy or of malice 
howl around him. His genius w ill conscci-ate him : 
and any attempt to extinguish that, will be as un- 
availing, as would a human effort " to quench the 
« stars." 

I have been led farther into these reflections 
than I had anticipated. The train was started by 
casting my eyes ovei- Virginia ; observing the very 
Jew who have advanced on the theatre of publick 
observation, and the very many who Mill remain 
for ever beliind the scenes. 

What frequent instances of high, native genius 
have I seen springing in the wildernesses of this 
country ; genius, whose blossoms, the light of sci- 
ence has never courted into expansion ; genius, 
which is doomed to fall and die, far from the no- 
tice and the haunts of men! How often, as I have 
held my way through the western forest of this 
state, and reflected on the vigorous shoots of su- 
yeriour intellect, which M'ere freezing and perish- 



THK BRITISH SPY. 151 

in^ there for the want of culture; how often have 
I recalled the moment, when our pathetick Gray, 
reclining under the mouldering elm of his coun- 
try church yard, while the sigh of genial sympa- 
thy broke from his heart, and the tear of noble 
pity started in his eye, exclaimed 

** Perhaps, in this neglected spot is VM 
" Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire, 

•* Hands that the rotl of empire might have sway'd, 
*' Or wak'd to ecstacy the livhig lyre. 

" But knowledge to their eyes, her ample page, 
" Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er uni-oll; 

" Chill ])enury reprt ss'd their noble rage, 
" And froze the genial current of their soul. 

" Full many a gem of purest ray serene, 
" The dark, unfatlionrd caves of ocean bear; 

*' Full many a flower is burn to blush unseen, 
" And waste its sweetness on the desert air 

•■' Some village Hampden, ihat with dauntless ^jreast, 

" The little tyrant of his fields withstood ; 
" Some mute, inglorious Milton, here niay rest; 
" Some Cromwell, guiltless of his countrj's Wood- 

*' Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, 
" Tiie threats of pain and ruin to despise, 

** To scatler plenty o'er a smiling land, 
" And read tlteir history in a mtion^s eyes, 

'* Their lot forbade."- 



152 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Tlie heart of a pliilanlhropist, no matter t(» 

what country or what form of government he 

may bfilong, immediately inquires, "And is there 

"no mode to prevent this melancholy waste of 

" talents ? Is there no mode by whicii the i-ays of 

" science might be so diffused over the state, as 

" to call forth each latent bud into Ufe and luxuri- 

" ance ?" There is such a mode : and what i-enders 

the legislature of this state still more inexcusable^ 

the i)lan by which these important purposes might 

be effected, has been drawn out and has lain by 

them for nearly thirty years. The declaration of 

tlie independence of this commonvvealtli was 

made in the nioith of ^Nlay, 1775.* In the fall of 

that year, a statute, or as it is called here, *' an 

*'act of assembly" was made, providing that a 

committee of five persons should be appointed to 

prepare a code of laws, adopted to the cliange of 

* This is a fact which the publick journals of the state 
establish beyond controversy ; aUhough the legal process 
and other piibliek acts of Virgiiii.i modestly waive this pre* 
cedence, and date the foundation of the commonweaUli, on 
the 4ih of July, 1776, the day on which the declaration of 
tl-.e iiidi pendence of the United States was promulgcd. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 153 

the state government. This code was to be sub- 
mitted to the legislature of the country, and to 
be ratified or rejected by their suffrage. 

In the ensuing November, by a resolution of 
the same legislature, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund 
Pendleton, George Wythe, George Mason, and 
Thomas Ludwell Lee, esquires, were appointed 
a committee to execute the work in question. It 
was prepai'ed by the three first named gentle- 
men ; the first of them, now the president of the 
United States; the second, the president of the 
supreme court of appeals of Virginia, and the 
third, the judge of the high court of chancery, at 
this place. 

I have perused this system of state police, with 
admiration. It is evidently the work of minds of 
most astonishing greatness ; capable, at once, of a 
grand, profound and comprehensive survey of the 
present and future interest and glory of the whole 
state ; and of pursuing that intei-est and glory 
through all the remote and minute ramifications 
of the most extensive and elaborate detail. 

Among other wise and higiily patriotick bills 

7* 



154 THE BRITISH SPY. 

^v]uch are proposed, there is one, for the more 
general difiiision of knowledge. After a preamble, 
in which the importance of the subject to the re- 
pubiick is most ably and eloquently announced, the 
bill proposes a simple and beautiful scheme, 
■whereby science (like justice under tlie institu- 
tions of our Alfred) would have been " carried 
*'to every man's door." Genius, instead of having 
to break its way through the thick opposing clouds 
of native obscurity, indigence and ignorance, was 
to be sought for through every family in the com- 
monwealth ; the sacred spark, wherever it wa.s 
detected, was to be tenderly cherished, fed, and 
fanned into a flame ; its innate properties and ten- 
dencies Mere to be developed and examined, and 
then cautiously and judiciously invested with all 
the auxiliaiy enei'gy and radiance of which its 
character was susceptible. 

What a plan was here to give stability and solid 
gloiy to the republick ! If you ask me M'hy it has 
never been adopted, I answer, that, as a foreign- 
er, I 'jcan perceive no possible reason for it, ex- 
cept that the comprehensive views and generous 



I 



THE BRITISH SPY. 155 

patriotism, which produced the bill, have not pre- 
vailed throughout the country, nor presided in 
the body on whose vote the adoption of the bill 
depended. I have new reason to remai-k it, al- 
most every day, that there is throughout Vir- 
ginia, a most deplorable destitution of publick spi- 
rit, of the noble pride and love of country. Un- 
less the body of the people can 1>e awakened 
from this fatal apathy ; unless their thoughts and 
their feelings can be urged beyond the narrow 
confines of their own private afiairs; unless they 
can be strongly inspired with the publick zeal, the 
amor patrice of the ancient repuUicks, the national 
embellishment, and the national grandeur of this 
opulent state, must be reserved for very distant 
ages. 

Adieu, my S ; pei'haps you will hear 

from me aarain before I leave Kichmond, 



FROM THE VIRGINIA GAZETTE. 

AN APOLOGY 

IN REPLY TO A HINT. 

X HE letters of the British Spy were furnished 
to amuse the citizens of the town and country ; 
and not to give pain to any one human being. Ac- 
cordingly, nothing has been said in censure of the 
inti^egrity, the philanthropy, the benevolence, cha- 
rity, or any other moral or religious virtue or 
grace of any one Virginian, who has been intro- 
duced into those letters. Nothing indeed could 
be justly snid on those heads, in censure of either 
of the gejitlemen. It is true, tliat some letters 
have been published, which have attempted to 
analyze the minds of three or four well known 
citizens of this state, and in oilier to designate 
them more particularly, a description of the per- 
son and manner of each gentleman was given. 
This has been called " throwing stones at other 



THE BRITISH SPY, 157 

**people's glass houses," and the person who has 
comnnuiicated those letters (gratuitously styled 
their "author") is politely reminded that he him- 
self resides "in a glass house." 

It this be correctly understood, it implies a 
threat of retaliation,- but all that the laws of re- 
taliation could justify, Avould be to amuse the 
tOAvu and country with a description of the per- 
son, manner and mind of the author (as he is 
called) of the British Spy. He fears, however, 
that it would puzzle the hinter, whatever his 
genius may be, to render so barren a subject in- 
teresting and amusing to tlie publick; and he would 
be much obliged to the hinter if he could make it 
appear that he (the furnisher of the letters) de- 
serves to be drawn into comparison, either as to 
person, manner, or mind, with any one of the 
gentleman delineated by the British Spy. As to 
his person, indeed, he is less solicitous ; the de- 
fects of that were imposed on him by nature 
and there is no principle better established than 
this general principle of eternal truth and justice, 
that no man ought to be censured for contingen-. 



158 THE BRITISH SPY. 

«ies over which he had no control. As to liis man- 
ner, he has as little objection to a publick descrip- 
tion of that as liis pei-son. 

To save the ti-ouble of others, however, he re- 
linquishes all pretensions either to the striking 
elegance which is calculated to excite admiration 
and respect, or to the conciliating grace and vital 
warmth which are qualified to gain enthusiastick 
fi'iends. His manner is probably such as would 
be produced, nine times out often, by the rustick 
education to which he was exposed. 

As to his mind, it is almost such as nature 
made it. He cannot boast with Gray, that ** sci- 
**ence frowned not on his humble birth." But 
what of this ? A man may very accurately anato- 
mize the powers of a mind far superiour to his 
own. It is not improbable that Zoilus' criticisms 
of Homer were just ; since every nod of Homer's 
\vas a fair suliject of criticism. Yet Avho will sup- 
pose that Zoilus could have produced such a work 
as the Iliad .'' It is impossible to read Dennis's cri- 
ticisms of Addison's Cato without bting forcibly 
Struck with tiieii- justice, and wo;idering that 



THE BRITISH SPY. 159 

they have never before occurred to ourselves. 
Yet there is no man, who will therefore pro- 
nounce the genius of Dennis equal to that of Ad- 
dison. These facts are so palpable and so well 
understood, that the person who furnished tlic 
letters of the British Spy (even if he had beea 
their author) could scarcely have had the pre- 
sumption to suppose, nor, I trust, the injustice 
to desire, that the publick would pronounce his 
mind free from the defects, mucli less indued 
with the energies and beauties of those which he 
criticises. 

But wVere is the harm which has been done ? 
Who are the gentlemen introduced into the 
British Spy? Are they young men just emerging 
into notice, and concerningwhom the publick have 
yet to form an opinion ? Far from it. They are 
gentlemen, who have long been, and who still 
ai-e displaying themselves in the very centre of 
the circle of general observation. They have not 
hid their light under a bushel. Their city is built 
on a high hill. There is not a feature of their 
persons, nor a quality of their mind or manner. 



160 THE BRITISH SPY. 

which has not been long and well known, and re- 
mai'ked, commented on, criticised, repeated and 
reiterated a thousand and ten thousand times in 
every circle and every corner of the country. 

Was it in the power, then, of any remarks in 
an anonymous and fugitive newspaper publication, 
either to injiu'e or serve gentlemen so well and 
so extensively known ? On the contrarj', if those 
remarks were untrue, they would be instantane- 
ously and infallibly corrected by the publick opi- 
aion and knowledge of the subject; if the re- 
marks were true, they would add no new fact to- 
the publick opinion and the publick knowledge. 
Thinking thus, nothing was more distant, either 
from the expectation or wish of the person who 
has furnished the px'ess with the letters of the 
British Spy, than that he was about to do an in- 
juiy to the character, or to inflict a wound on the 
feelings of any citizen of the country. Why could 
he have expected or wished any such efitct ? He 
eould not have been actuatt^d by resentment ; for 
neither of those gentlemen hwe ever done him 
an injury. He could not have been moved by 



THE BRITISH SPY. 161 

personal interest ; since his conscious inferiority, 
as well as the nature of his pursuits, remove hiia 
far from tlie possibility of being ever brought in- 
to collision with either of those gentlemen. He 
could not have been impelled by diabolical envy, 
or the malicious agony of blasted ambition ; since 
his country has already distinguished him far, 
very far, beyond his desert. And of tlie malevo- 
lence of lieart which could intentionally do a 
wicked, a wanton and unprovoked injury, he is 
persuaded that either of the gentlemen, if they 
knew him, would most freely and cheerfully ac- 
quit him. 

If he be asked ivhy he published the letters 
describing those characters? He answers. 

First, for the same reason that he would, if he 
could, present to the town, a set of landscape 
paintings, representing all the lovely prospects 
which belong to their beautiful city ; to furnish 
them with the amusement and pleasure, which 
arise from surveying an accurate picture of a well 
known original : and this implies, that he could not 



162 THE BRITISH SPY. 

have believetl himself, adding new informatiou, 
as to the originals themselves. 

Secondly, he hoped that the abstracted and 
jniscellaneous remarks, which were blended with 
the desciiption of those characters, might not be 
without their use, to the many literary young 
men who are growing up in Virginia. 

If the letters of the British Spy have gone be- 
yond these purposes; if the)' have given pain to 
the gentlemen described ; (for as to doing them 
an injury, it is, certainly, out of the question) there 
is no man in the community disposed to regret 
it, more sensibly, than the man who furnished 
those letters for publication. 

But while honour and justice compel the wi'iter 
of this article to give these explanations, and make 
these acknowledgments to the gentlemen imme- 
diately interested, he begs he may not be consi- 
dered as descending to the meanness of begging 
mercy on his own " glass house." On the contra- 
ry, the person, who has published the polite hint 
in question, is welcome to commence his assault 



THE BRITISH SPY. 163 

as soon as he pleases. He can scarcely point out 
one defect in the pei*son, manner, or mind of this 
•writer, of which he is not already conscious. And 
if he meant by his menace any thing more ; if he 
meant to insinuate a suspicion to the publick, that 
the honesty, integrity, or moral purity, of thr 
man who furnished the letters of the British 
Spy for publication, are assailable on any ground 
of ti'Uth; if such was his intention, he has intend- 
ed an injury, at which this writer laughs in proud 
seciu'ity: an injury, for which his own heart, if it 
be a good one, will not forgive him so soon, as 
will the heart of the man whom he has attempted 
to injure. 

The writer of this article tenders in return this 
hint to the hinter : that before he commences his 
hostile operations, he will be sure of his man. As 
to the person who really did furnish the British 
Spy— the finger of conjecture has been errone- 
ously pointed at several who reside in this state. 
It would be unjust and barbarous to punish the 
innocent for the guilty, if guilt can be justly 
charged on the British Spy. 



LETTER X. 

Ricbmoud, December 10. 
A N one of my late rides into the sui'rounding 
country, I stopped at a little inn to refresh my- 
self and rny horse ; and, as the landlord was nei- 
ther a Boniface, nor " mine host of the garter,'* 
I called for a book, by way of killing time, while 
the preparations for my repast were going for- 
ward. He brouglit me a shattered fragment of 
the second volume of the Spectator, which he told 
me was the only book in the house, for " he ne- 
" ver troubled his head about reading ;" and by 
way of conclusive proof, he farther informed me, 
that this fragment, the only book in the house, 
had been sleeping unmolested in the dust of his 
mantlepiece, for ten or fifteen years. I could not 
meet my venerable countryman, in a foreign 
land, and in this humiliating plight, nor hear of 
the inhuman and gothick contempt with which he 
had been treated, without the liveliest eraotioa. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 165 

So I read my host a lecture on the subject, to 
T^hich he appeared to pay as little attention, as 
he had before done to the Spectator, and, with 
the sang froid of a Dutchman, answei^ed me ia 
the cant of the countiy, that he " had other fish 
" to fry," and left me. 

It had been so long since I had had an oppor- 
tunity of opening that agreeable collection, that 
the few numbers, which were now before me, 
appeai'ed almost intirely new ; and I cannot de- 
scribe to you, die avidity and delight, with which 
I devoured those beautiful and interesting spe- 
culations. 

Is it not strange, my dear S , that such 

a work should have ever lost an inch of ground ? 
A style so sweet and simple, and yet so orna- 
mented ! a temper so benevolent, so cheerful, so 
exhilarating ! a body of knowledge, and of ori- 
^nal thought, so immense and various! so striking- 
ly just, so universally useful ! What person,of any 
age, sex, temper, calling, or pursuit, can possibly 
converse with the Spectator, without being con- 
sclcus of immediate improvement i 



166 THE BRITISH SPY. 

To the spleen, he is as perpetual, and netexv 
failing an antidote, as he is to ignorance and im- 
morality. No matter for the disposition of mind 
in which you take him up ; you catcJi, as you go 
along, the happy tone of spirits which prevails 
throughout the work; you smi-le at the wit, laugh 
at the drollery, feel your mind enhghtened, your 
heart opened, softened and refined; and whea 
you lay him down, you are sure to he in a better 
humour, both with v ourself and every body else. 
I have never mentioned the subject to a reader 
of the Spectator, who did not admit this to be the 
invariable process ; and in such a world of misfor- 
tunes, of cares and sorrows and guilt as this is, 
what a prize would this collection be, if it were 
rightly estimated ! 

Were I the sovereign of a nation, which spoke 
the English language, and wished my subjects 
cheerful, virtuous and enlightened, I would fur- 
nish every poor family in my dominions (and see 
that the rich furnished themselves) with a copy 
of the Spectator ; and ordain that the parents or 
children should read four or five numbers, aloud. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 167 

every night in the year. For one of the peculiar 
perfections of the work is, that while it contains 
such a mass of ancient and modern learning, so 
much of profound wisdom, and of beautiful com- 
position, yet there is scarcely a number through- 
out the eight volumes, which is not level to the 
meanest capacity. Another perfection is, that the 
Spectator will never become tiresome to any 
one whose taste and whose heart remain un- 
•orrupted, 

I do not mean that this author, should be read 
to the exclusion of others ; much less that he 
should stand in the way of the generous pursuit 
of science, or interrupt the discharge of social or 
private duties. All the counsels of the work it- 
self have a directly reverse tentlency. It furnishes 
a store of the clearest argument, and of the most 
amiable and captivating exhortations, *' to raise 
'' tlie genius, and to mend the heart." I regret, 
©nly, that such a book should de thrown by, and 
almost intirely forgotten, while the gilded blas- 
phemies of infidels, and " the noontide trances'* 
of pernicious theorists, are hailed with rapture. 



168 THE BRITISH SPY. 

and echoeci around the world. For such, Tshould 
be pleased to see the Spectator universally sub- 
stituted: and, tlirowhig out of the question its 
moi'ality, its literary information, its sweetly con- 
tagious serenity, and the pui'e and chaste beauties 
of its style ; and considering it merely as a curi- 
osity, as concentring the brilliant sports of the 
finest cluster of geniuses, that ever graced the 
earth, it surely deserves perpetual attention, re- 
spect and consecration. 

There is, me thinks, my S , a great 

fault in the wox'ld, as it respects this subject: a 
giddy instability, a light and flattering vanity, a 
prurient longing after novelty, an impatience, 
a disgust, a fastidious contempt of every thing 
that is old. You will not understand me as cen- 
suring the pi'Ogress of sound science. I am not so 
infatuated an antiquarian, nor so poor a philan- 
thropist, as to seek to retard the expansion of 
the human mind. But I lament the eternal ob- 
livion, into which our old authors, those giants of 
literature, are permitted to sink, while the world 
stands open-eyed and open-mouthed to catch 



THE BRITISH SPY. 169 

cveiy modern, tinselled abortion, as it falls from 
the press. In the polite circles of America, for in- 
stance, perhaps there is no want of taste and even 
zeal for letters. I have seen several gentlemen, 
who appear to have an accurate, a minute ac- 
quaintance with the whole range of literature, in 
its present state of improvement : yet, you will be 
surprised to hear, that I have not met with more 
than one or two persons in this countrj', who have 
ever i*ead the works of Bacoi\ or of Boyle. They 
delight to saunter in the upper story, sustained and 
adorned, as it is, with the delicate proportions, the 
foliage and flourishes of the Corinthian order ; but 
they disdain to make any acquaintance, or hold 
communion at all, with the Tuscan and Doi-ie 
plainness and strength, which base and support 
the whole edifice. 

As to lord Verulam, when he is considered as 
the father of experimental philosophy; as the 
champion, whose vigour battered down the idoli- 
sed chimeras of Aristotle, together with all the 
appendant and immeasurable webs of the brain, 
woven and hung upon them, by the ingenious 



170 THE BRITISH SPY. 

di'eamers of the schools ; as the hero who not only 
i'escued and' redeemed the world from all this 
darkness, jargon, perplexity and errour; but,frona 
the stores of his own great mind, poured a flood 
of light upon the earth, sti'aightened the deTioi£( 
paths of science, and planned the whole paradise, 
which we now find so full of fragrance, beauty 
and grandeur; when he is considered, I say, ia 
these4)oints of view, I am astonished that literary 
gentlemen do not court his acquaintance, if not 
through reverence, at least through curiosity. 
The person who does so will find every period 
ill ltd with pure and solid golden bullion : that 
bullion, Avhich several much admired posterioE 
writers have merely moulded into various forma^ 
or beaten into leaf, and taught to spread its float- 
ing splendours to the sun. 

Tins insatiable palate for novelty, which I have 
mentioned, has had a very striking eflect on tlve 
style of modern productions. The plain language 
of easy conversation will no longer do. The writev 
who contends for fame, or even for trutli, i» 
oliliged to consiUt the reigning taste of the day. 



THE BRITISH SPY. in 

Hence, too often, in opposition to his ow-n judg- 
ment, he is led to incumber his ideas Avith a gor- 
geous load of oi'naments; and when he would 
present to the publick a body of pure, substantial 
and useful thought, he finds himself constrained 
to incrust and bury its utility Avithin a dazzling 
ease ; to convert a feast of reason into a concert 
of sounds : a rich intellectual boon into a mere 
bouquet of variegated pinks and blushing' roses. 
In his turn he contributes to establish and spread 
wider the perversioi) of the publick taste ; and thus, 
on a principle resembling that of action and reac- 
tion, the author and the publick reciprocate the in- 
jury ; just as, in the licentious reign of our Charles 
the II, the dramatist and his audience were wont 
to poison each other's morals. 

A history of style would indeed be a curious 
and a highly interesting one : I mean a philoso- 
phical, as well as a chronological history : one 
which, besides marking the gradations, changes 
and fluctuations exhibited in the stylo of differ- 
ent ages and different countries, should open the 
regular or contingent causes of all those grada- 



172 THE BRITISH SPY. 

tioiis, changes ai\<l fluctuations. I sliould be par? 
ticularly pleased to see a learned and penetrating 
mind employed on the question. Whether the 
gradual adornment, which we observe in a na- 
tion's style, result from the progress of science ; or 
whether there be an infancy, a youth, and a 
manhood, in a nation's sensibility, which rising in 
a distant af^e, like a newborn billoAV, rolls on 
throngh succeeding generations, with accumu- 
lating height and force, and bears along with it 
the concurrent expression of that sensibility, un- 
til they both swell and tower into the sublime— 
and sometimes break into the bathos. 

The historical facts, as Avell as the metaphysi- 
cal consideration of the subject, perplex these 
questions extremely; and, as sir Roger I)e Cover- 
ley says, "much may be said on both sides." 
For the present, I shall say nothing on either; 
except that from some of Mr. Blair's remarks, it 
would seem that neither of those hypotheses will 
solve the phenomenon before us. If I remember 
his opinion correctly, the most sublime style is to 
be sought in a state of nature ; when, anterioiU' to 



THE BRITISH SPY. 173 

the existence of science, the scantiness of a lan- 
guage forces a people to notice the points of I'e- 
seniblance between the great natui^al objects with 
which they are surrounded ; to apply to one tlie 
terms which belong to another ; and thus, by com- 
pulsion, to rise at once into simile and metaphor, 
and launch into all the boldness of trope and fi- 
gure. If this be true, it would seem that the pro- 
gress of a civilized nation towards sublimity of 
style is perfectly a retrograde manoeuvre : that is, 
that they will be sublime accoi-ding to the near- 
ness,^ of their approach to the primeval state of 
nature. 

This is a curious and, to me, a bewitching sub- 
ject. But it leads to a volume of thought, which 
is not to be condensed in a letter. I will remark 
only one extraordinary fact as it relates to style. 
The Augustan age is pronounced by some criticks 
to have furnished the finest models of style, em- 
bellished to the highest endurable point : and of 
this, Cicero is always adduced as the most illus- 
trious example. Yet it is remarkable, that seventy 
or eighty years afterwards, wh^ the Roman 



174 THE BRITISH SPY. 

style had become much more luxuriant, and was 
denounced by the criticks of the day* as having 
transcended the limits of genuine ornament, 
Pliny the younger, in a letter to a friend, thought 
it necessary to enter into a formal vindication of 
tliree or four metaphors, which he had used in an 
oration, and which had been censured in Rome 
for their extravagance; but which, by the side of 
the meanest of Curran's figures, would be poor, 
insip'd and flat. Yet who will say that Curran's 
style has gone beyond the point of endurance ? 
Wlio is not pleased with its purity ? Wiio is not 
ravished by its sublimity ? 

In England, how wide is the chasm between 
the style of lord \'erulam and that of Edmund 
Burke, or M'Intosh's introduction to his Vin- 
dicice GalUcce ! That of the first is the pltua 
dress of a Quaker ; that of the two last, the mag- 
nificent paraphernalia of Louis XIV of France. 
In lord Verulam's day, his style was distinguished 
for its superiour ornament; and in this respect, it 

• See Quinetilian's Institutes. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 175 

vas thought impossible to surpass it. Yet Mm 
Eurke, Mr. M'Intosb, and the otlier fine writers 
of the present age, have, by contrast, reduced 
lord Verulam's flower garden to the appearance 
of a simple culinary square. 

Perhaps it is for this reason, and because, as 
you know, I am an epicure, that I am very mucli 
interested by lord Verulam's manner. It is in- 
deed a most agreeable relief to my mind to turn 
from the stately and dazzling, rhapsodies of the 
day, and converse with this plain and sensible old 
gentleman. To rae his style is gi'atifying on ma- 
ny accounts ; and there is this advantage in him, 
that instead of having three or foui' ideas rolled 
over and over and over again, like the fantastick 
evolutions and everchanging shapes of the same 
sun -embroidered cloud, you gain new materials, 
new information at every breath. 

Sir Robert Boyle is, in my opinion, anotlier 
author of the same description, and therefore aa 
equal, if not a higher favourite with me. In point 
of ornament, he is the first grade in the mighty 
space (through the whole of whicli the gi'adations 



176 THE BRITISH SPY. 

/ 
rnay be distinctly traced) between Bacon and 

Burke. Yet he has no redundant verbiage; hai 
about him a perfectly patriarchal simplicity ; atd 
every period is pregnant with matter. He has this 
advantage too over lord Verulam : that he not 
only investigates all the subjects which are calcu- 
lated to try the clearness, tlie force and the com- 
prehension of the human intellect : he intraluces 
others also, in handling of which he shows the 
masterly power with vhich he could touch the 
keys of the heart, and awaken all the tones of 
sensibility which belong to man. Siu-ely, if ever a 
human being deserved to be canonized for great, 
unclouded intelligence, and seraphick purity and 
ecstasy of soul, that being was sir liobert Boyle. 
When I reflect that this "pure intelligence, 
**this link betv/een men and angels," was a chris- 
tian, and look around upon the petty infidels and 
deists vvJtb v.hich the world swarms, I am lost in 
amazement ! Have they seen arguments against 
religion, which were not presented to sir Robert 
Boyle.' His religious works show that they have 
not. Are their judgnicnts better able to weigh 



THE BRITISII SPY. 177 

those ai'guments than his was? Tliey have not 
the vanity even to helieve it. Is the beam of their 
judgments more steady, and less liable to be dis- 
turbed by passion than his ? O ! no; for in this he 
seems to have excelled all mankind. Ai-e theii* 
minds more elevated and more capable of com- 
prehending the whole of this gi-eat subject, with 
all its connexions and dependencies, than was the ' 
mind of sir Robert Boyle ? Look at the men : an<l 
the question is answered. How then does it hap- 
pen that they have been conducted to a conclu-- 
sion, so perfectly the reverse of his ? It is for this 
very reason : because their judgments are less ex- 
tricated from the influence and raised above the 
mists of passion : it is because their minds are less 
ethereal and comprehensive; less capable than his 
was " to look through nature up to nature's God." 
And let them hug their precious, barren, hope- 
less infidelity : they are welcome to the horrible 
embrace ! May we, my fi-iend, never lose tjie rieft 
and inexhaustible comforts of religion. 
Adieu, my S 



JL HE aiillior of "An Inquirer," on tlie theoiy 
of the earth, begs leave to offer the following ob- 
servatioJis to the publisher of "the Biitish Spy," 
in answer to some of his additional notes. 

When tlie Inquirer read, in the second letter 
of the British Spy, that "the pei'petualrevolutioa 
" of the earth, from west to east, has the ob^'ioU3 
" tendency to conglomerate the loose sands of the 
" sea, on tlie eastern coast," — " that, whether the 
" rolling of tlie earth to the east give to the ocean 
" an actual counter-current to the west or not, the 
" newly emerged pinnacles ai'e whirled, by the 
" eartli's motion, thiough tlie waters of the deep ;" 
and, from the continued operation of the causes 
which produced them, that *'all continents and' 
"" islands will be caused, reciprocally, to approxi- 
"mate;" when he read these and other si mihir 
passages, he saw no reason to doubt, that tlie 
British Spy considered the ocean «ow, as well as 



THE BRITISH 9PY. 179 

formerly, affected by the rotation of the eartli ; 
or, to express the same tiling more correctly, that 
the rotatory motion of the earth is but partially 
communicated to the ocean. This opinion, which 
a thousand facts may be brought to disprove, and 
which the favourite cosmogonist of the Britisk 
Spy says* no man can entertain who has the 
least knowledge of physicks, it was decorous to 
suppose, had been advanced fi-om inadvei-tence. 
If the meaning of the writer were taken by the 
Inquirer, in a greater latitude than was meant., 
he is not the less sori-y for his mistake, because 
it was a natural one, and was not confined to 
himself 

But the annotator of the Spy, without saying 
whether the supposed current now exist or nof 
thinks the former existence of such a current not 
improbable, and puts a case, by \<,'^y of illustrating 

* The passage in Smellie's translation of BwiTon stands 
thus: But every man, who has the least knowledge of 
physicks, must allow, that no fluid, which suiTounds the 
earth, can be affected by its rotation : "N'ol. I. On Kegular 
winds. 



ISO THE BRITISH SPY. 

Lis hypothesis. ISIy reasoning on the subject, 
somewhat different from his, is briefly this. 

If the whole surface of the earth, Avhtn it first 
received its rotatory impulse, were covered with 
Avater, and this imlmlse ivere communicated to its 
iolidpart alone, tlien, indeed, a current to the 
Avest would be produced; and would continue, 
until the resistance, occasioned by the friction of 
the waters, gradually communicated the whole 
motion of the earth to the ocean. It is not easy to 
say, w hen this current Avould cease ; but it seems 
to me, it would be more likely to Avear the bed of 
the ocean smooth, than to raise protuberances ; 
and even, though it Avere to cause sand banks, it 
could never elevate them above its own level. 

I should observe, that to aAoid circumlocution, 
ladmiia current to the 'west ; because the effect 
is the same, as to alluvion, Avhether the earth I'e- 
volve under the Avaters, or the Avaters roll over 
the earth; though the fact is, that the ocean, 
like the oil in the plate, in the experiment pro- 
posed, Avould have a tendency to remain at rest, 
and Avhatever motion it acquii'ed, must be to the 



THE BRITISH SPY. 181 

fast, like that of the earth, from which it was 
derived. 

If we suppose a few solitary mountains to lift 
their heads above the ciixumfluous ocean, we 
may infer, by the rules of strict analogy, that 
they would be worn away by the friction of the 
passing waters, rather than that they would re- 
ceive any accessions of soil. 

But let us suppose some ridges of mountains, 
running from north to south, and of sufficient ex- 
tent and elevation to obstruct the course of the 
waters. In this case, the sudden whirling of the 
earth to the east would force the ocean on its 
•western shores, where it w^ould accumulate, until 
the gravity of the mass, thus elevated, overcame 
the force which raised it. Then one vast undula- 
tion of the stupendous mass would take place, 
from shore to shore, and would continue until it 
gradually yielded to the united effect of friction 
and gravity. A comparison between vessels of 
different sizes, partly filled with water, might 
enable us to form a rational conjecture of the 
terra of this oscillation; but be it one year, ot 



183 THE BRITISH SPY. 

nAny years, I think the effect would more pro- 
bably be, an abrasion of the mountain, than the 
formation of a continent. 

But the posiulatum, that the first impulse to- 
the earth was communicated to its solid part 
alone, on which all these suppositions rest, is but 
a possibility : Whether we suppose that the cause, 
\\'hich first whirled the earth on its axis, is an 
ascending liiik in nature's chain of causes, or the 
immediate act of the first Great Cause of all, it 
is not unlikely that it penetrated and influenced 
every particle of matter, whether it were solid, 
liquid, or aeriform. 

On this subject, our suppositions are to be li- 
mited only by our invention. One man may resort 
to electricity, accoixling to an alleged property of 
that fluid; anotlier, to magnetism ; a third to the 
action of the sun's rays ; and a fourth, to a quality 
inherent in matter ; accoi'ding to either of which 
hypotheses, no current could have existed. 

jVlonsieur de Buffbn, indeed, ascribes the earth's 
rotation to a mechanical and partial impulse, the 
obliQue Btroke of a comet; but as, according to 



TITE BRITISH SPY. 183 

liim, the earth was then one intire globe of melt- 
ed glass, its rotatory motion must have been uni- 
form, long before the ocean existed. 

Whoever Avould dispel the clouds in which this 
question is enveloped, and make it as clear *' as 
*' the light of heaven," should indeed be mm 
ina^-ims Apollo : 'but hypotheses, of which nothing 
can be said, but that they are not impossible,, 
though they may beguile the lounger of a heavy 
hour, are little likely to further our knowledge of 
nature. la so boundless a field of conjecture, with 
scarce one twinkling star to guide us, we can 
"hardly hope to find, among tlie numberless ti-acks 
of errour, that which singly leads to truth. 

When the Inquirer spoke of the genei'al boule- 
versement which many subterranean appearan- 
ces indicated, he did not mean even to hint at 
their cause, but simply to express, as the word 
imports, the topsyturvy disorder, in which vege- 
iablc and marine substances are found : the one 
•far above, and the otlier far beloto, the seat of its 
|4)riginal production. At the moment he was at- 



ISi THE BRITISH SPY. 

tempting toshoAv, that every explanation of these 
phenomena was imperfect and premature, he 
hardly Avould have ventured to give one himself; 
for thougli " we sliould not suffer ourselves to be 
'" passively fed on the pap of science," when we 
have attained our matuntyy yet, until we have 
attained it, he thinks it is better to be in leading- 
strings, than to stumble at every step. 

lu the progress of science, I doubt whether 
sound principles ai'e abandoned for those that are 
less true. Novelty in moral speculation, fiided as 
it may be, by our passions, may dazzle and mis- 
lead ; but ill physicks, though one errour may give 
place to another, when truth once gets possession, 
she holds it firm, ever after. Thus, the theories 
of cosmogonists follow one another, like wave ob- 
truding upon wave ; each demonstrating the fal- 
lacy of th(jse Avhich went before, and proved ab- 
surd in turn ; while the philosophy of Newton, in 
spite of the continued opposition of French aca- 
demicians, and the later reveries of St. Pierre, 
gi-adually gains universal credit and respect. The 



IHE BRITISH SPY. 183 

member of the Royal Society, who accounted for 
tlie trade winds by the traiispiratioa of tropical 
sea-weed, may have had l»is admirers ; but he has 
not been able to shake the theory of Dr. Hal- 
ley. If Harvey's system of generation had beea 
as well supported by facts, as his discovery of 
the circulation of the blood, all hostility to the 
one, as well as to the othex-, would have ended 
with his life. 

It certainly is not philosophical " to discard 
'* a theory," because it may be un supported by a 
name, nor yet, because there are other more re- 
cent theories. In these and many other general 
remarks, I intirely concur with the writer, though 
I do not clearly discern their application. 

I cannot conclude, without regretting, that I 
should be compelled to differ with a wiiter whose 
talents I so much admire, and whose sentiments 
I so often approve ; but to borrow a celebrated 
sentiment, my esteem for truth exceeds even 
my esteem for the British Spy. 'I'hough neither 
of us may chance to convince the other, yet, if 



186 THE BRITISH SPY. 

our discussion should lead those who have not 
tlie same parental tenderness, for particular hy- 
potheses or doubts, to a better undei'standing of 
the subject, the light, that is thus elicited, will 
console me for the collision which produced it. 
Octobei- 12, 1306. 



THE OLD BACHELOR, 



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